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RUTH 




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RUTH 



AN IDYLL OF THE OLDEN TIME 



BY 



REV. A. S. FlSKE, D. D. 



NON IN SOLO 




PANE VIVIT HOMO 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

THE NEALE COMPANY 
431 iith St. N. W. 

1900 



64611 

Library of Qonqvmu 

Two Copies Received 
OCT 22 1900 

Copyright entry 

SEOPNP COPY. 
OSDl* PWSKM. 



3> 



^ 



A* 







Copyright, 1900 

BY 

The Neale Company 



LC control Number 




tmp96 



027363 



PREFATORY 

This study of the story of Ruth has been made 
with no critical purpose. The writer, enchanted 
by the beauty of this old Jewish Idyll, its char- 
acters, incidents, and exquisite colorings, has 
loved to let them play through his imagination 
and to linger leisurely along its by-paths and 
among its suggestions. 

He hopes that, following him through this little 
book, some may find a fresh love for the ancient 
story and be led to a more cordial appreciation of 
the beauties of this and other delicious sections 
of Old Testament literature. 

If others shall find as much quiet satisfaction 

in the reading as he has in the writing he will be 

content. 

A. s. F. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. An Idyll of the Olden Time 9 

II. The Parting, The Cleaving and the 

Departure 29 

III. In Bethlehem at Last 45 

IV. Boaz 61 

V. The Gleaner A~Field 79 

VI. The Winnowing and the Wedding . . 93 

VII. The Wife, the Home, the Mother . . 109 

VIII. Steadfastness vs. Impulse 124 

IX. The Christian Use of Personal Affec- 
tion 139 

X. Labor and Capital 156 



RUTH 



CHAPTER I 

AN IDYLL OF THE OLDEN TIME. 
Ruth 1 : 1-7. 

Antiquity has a beauty all its own. 

" The past will always win 
A glory from its being far." 

Outlines grow soft and gracious in the far off. 
The great stands cleared of hard detail. The 
good is stripped to the very essence of it and 
stands all worthy. The ancient fascinates with 
the charm of all history, is suffused with the 
mystery of the ages. What one sees in the old 
world is only more effective than what he sees in 
the new for that which it suggests to the imagina- 
tion. It is not what you see, but that with which 
it floods the imagination and wakens the historic 
sense, that enthralls you on the Rhine, in Egypt, 
in Palestine, or in the Place de la Concorde. 

I bring you in these studies a book full of the 
color and flavor of a very high and genuine an- 
tique. Few bits of literature antedate it. It is 



io Ruth 

as rich and smooth as the ' ' Old Falernian ' ' 
of which the Latin poets were wont to sip and 
sing. 
' The " Book of Ruth " is a simple Idyll of the 
very olden time ; told us, may be, by the prophet 
Samuel, when he was not in preaching mood, or, 
possibly, when he was at the very best of his 
preacher's art. But whoever or whenever the 
writer may have been or lived, he did almost the 
daintiest bit of literature that ever was in this 
recital of an incident of the times, which had 
fallen under his own eye or had been handed 
down from his predecessors. 

The author, with perfection of art, is completely 
hidden. We have no possible interest in his dis- 
covery. His characters are not puppets, obviously 
performing by wire-pulls of the man behind the 
screen, who is forever peeping round the corner 
to see the effects ! They just stand there and 
live and move and talk in the very freedom and 
fulness of nature. 

^ I said that the prophet was not in a preaching 
mood, or else was in the best of that mood, for he 
stays to draw no moral, awards no praise nor 
blame. Like a master, he just lets the play go 
on, apparently caring nothing to make his person- 
ages seem one thing or another, merely setting 
them out and letting them go. And how sweetly, 
beautifully, grandly they do it ! The pictures 
which we shall see stand, each in itself, so com- 
plete and absolute in the perfection of an almost 
incomparable simplicity of beauty, — they rise so 



Ruth 1 1 

by a pen-stroke, and stand immortal in a sentence 
or two ; they are changed, related, and moved so 
as by touch of a magician's wand, only that the 
magician is nature, that the effect of the whole is 
an absolute unity. The subordinate figures and 
scenes are merely traced and glanced at. No 
tragic attitudes are struck at the death of the 
father and the sons, on which a novice, or a 
bungler, or a prophet-preacher who was less than 
a master would certainly have shaken himself out 
for effect. That would have been sheer bungle 
and excrescence. Family, famine, flight, death, 
marriages, ten years of life, deaths again, are all 
managed amply in a half dozen curt sentences. 
The womanly, gossiping wonder at Bethlehem on 
the return of Naomi and Ruth is admirably put — 
so as to be perfectly clear — yet half hidden in a 
single Hebrew feminine pronoun, one simple ques- 
tion and one magnificent burst of pathetic reply, — 
a reply so full of the austere beauty and grand dig- 
nity of an utter sorrow that the gossiping wonder of 
the women is awed into respectful silence, — that 
it bows all hearts in every age into reverence for 
the sorrows and the soul out of which such answer 
could come. All their life in Moab and Bethlehem 
is set out and covered in a few half parentheses, 
which yet command into clearest view the elabor- 
ated detail with which the main incidents are so 
effectively enrobed. At the end there is no grand 
glorification over the setting of this sweet woman 
of Moab into the motherhood of David and David's 
greater son, but a cold genealogical table half 



1 2 Ruth 

covering, yet fully revealing, the object of the 
book. While the incidents not making directly 
to the outcome, but merely filling in the needful 
backgrounds, are dealt with so summarily, these 
main figures and incidents in chief are dwelt on 
with a lingering and unhurried fulness in which 
you can see how the heart of the poet is feasting 
itself on the gracious beauty of the scenes which 
he so graphically portrays, — how he has fallen in 
love with the personages so unconsciously taking 
their places in world's history not only, but in its 
highest literature as well. 

The purity, simplicity and dignity of the style 
/of the story is wonderful. Its beauty in all the 
drapery of circumstance is admirable. The clear- 
cut individuality, distinctness and natural inter- 
play of its personages is perfection itself. The 
easy and absolute pre-eminence of its three chief 
figures merely set out and off by all the rest, is 
accomplished with a master's skill, while the sen- 
tentious but unforced brevity of the whole is 
past praise. Its series of incidents, persons, and 
dramatic situations pass before the reader with a 
vividness and enchanting beauty to which I 
hardly know where in letters sacred or profane to 
point out any near approach. Perhaps the story 
of the raising of Lazarus may equal it in its deli- 
cate touches. I have read that Franklin, while 
minister to France, was at a gathering of the 
literati of France, where each was to read some 
choice fragment of literature. He chose and read 
this story of Ruth. When he had finished, several 



Ruth 13 

of the group hastened to thank him for the 
strangely beautiful selection, and to ask him where 
he had found it. Of the literary art and merit of 
the little, old story too much cannot well be said. 
This rural idyll of the old time went fitly into the 
series of "Little Classics," which, I suppose, 
stands on the shelves of most of your libraries. 
It is a gem of purest ray, — a "classic" for all 
time. Through three thousand years to come 
as through the three thousand years of its past 
popularity, will it be admired and loved by all 
lovers of good letters. 

To the story, then. The time is somewhere in 
the rough four hundred )^ears following the death 
of Joshua, midway, perhaps. During this period, 
from something more than fourteen hundred 
years before Christ to about eleven hundred, fif- 
teen judges ruled, some of them women, some 
men, some good in the main, some bad on the 
whole, but all mixed, like Samson, though on the 
average better than he, and all of them quite as 
good as the times and the people deserved or 
could appreciate. The man for any time must be 
of it. Some of them held something like a regu- 
lar governing office. Others sprang up at an 
emergency and then settled back into the mass of 
the people. Some of them swayed an authority 
which reached all the tribes. Others had influ- 
ence with but one or two of them, or only on one 
or other side of the Jordan. They were raised up 
with special qualities for special occasions. That 
Jehovah used them for an occasion is no token 



14 Ruih 

that he approved them as characters or sanctioned 
their performances. Judas, Pilate, false witnesses 
and murderers, were used of God in effecting the 
atonement for the sins of the world. Even the 
devil has his function in the scheme of grace. 

Israel through all this time was ever and anon 
lapsing into idolatry and outrageous sin ; was 
ever being caught of judgment and tossed back 
into sacrifice and worship ; was in no real sense a 
nation, but a disorderly and confused grouping of 
loosely-gathered tribal families, less than half re- 
covered from an absolute savagery, fighting for 
a precarious foothold on either side of the Jordan. 
They never got fairly down to the Meditteranean, 
their boundary on the one hand, nor out toward 
the Euphrates on the other. They were often 
worsted and pushed close to the last ditch, but 
always preferred slavery, under whatever of 
heathenisms, to death. The ' ' chosen people ■ ' 
were in a sad, chaotic case for the most part, of- 
ten in peril of starvation through irregular tillage, 
and in jeopardy from the incursions of fierce 
neighbors, or hatcheled under the express judg- 
ments of their neglected and forsaken God. 

Somewhere in this chaotic time lived a Jewish 
family of note at Bethlehem, Elimelech's. ' 'What's 
in a name?" Why, much, as we shall see. 
Elimelech is an aristocratic name, a pious name. 
' ' God is king ' ' is its meaning. A branch of 
royalty its bearer. ' ' Naomi ' ' means ' ' my pleas- 
antness, f ' * ' my delight, ' ' ' 4 my glory. " ' ' Orpah ' ' 
is a fawn. "Ruth" is either a " friend" or a 



Ruth 15 

' ' rose. ' ' Our Ruth is the sweet ' ' rose ' ' of Moab. 
This family of property, standing, and good 
blood in Bethlehem, — town yet to be of great 
repute in the sacred history of the world, — had 
fallen into straits. Crops had failed. Enemies 
had ravaged their fields and rifled their proper- 
ties, likely. They were destitute, afflicted and 
tormented. What shall they do ? "We at least 
have feet left to w r alk with," said Elimelech, em- 
bittered. "Out of this everlasting peril and tur- 
moil of harrassed and ravaged Israel let us get ! 
The Jordan is fordable, let us hope, and there are 
the safe mountains and splendid pastures and the 
secure heritage of stout, unvexed Moab the other 
side." They decide and they go. To be sure 
Israel is the people of God. With them are his 
altars and his promises. They are turning their 
backs on Jehovah and his people, but then that 
people is shamed, tormented, starving, at lowest 
ebb. To be sure there is explicit and oft-reiter- 
ated Divine prohibition of this kind of thing which 
they are doing. They — this peculiar people — 
are not to have anything to do with the idolators 
around them, must not touch them save with the 
keen edge of the sword or the glittering point of 
the spear. These old-time Jews haven't religion 
enough to be set at converting anybody else. 
Who has not enough for that must not touch any- 
body else lest he be himself perverted. Not hav- 
ing their religion in saving measure for others, 
they must be kept carefully away from idolatry 
lest they themselves become idolators. Just so 



1 6 Ruth 

now. Multitudes haven't enough of Christ to 
touch the world anywhere with salvation, so not 
enough to touch it at all without plunging into 
all its defilements. 

Elimelech and Naomi, — a woman not much 
likely to be led blind by any husband, and none 
the worse a wife or woman for that, — Elimelech 
and Naomi know all these prohibitions, under- 
stand them clearly enough, but they say, "We 
can't stay here with our boys to perish. Besides, 
these boys of ours will be pushing off into these 
endless wars and getting themselves killed. What 
does this musty old prohibition amount to, any 
way ? And surely this people and church of God 
are not much good to anybody. Just as well off 
outside it. One has got to take care of himself 
and his children, it is likely. Jehovah doesn't do 
it much here, anyhow. He will help them who 
help themselves, I reckon. Come, get we out of 
this to Moab." So they argued and so they went. 
Now do not let us be too sharp on them. For a 
living, if driven to it, are there not amongst us 
some who would venture to transgress some word 
of God ? Even in our better light and richer grace 
and dearer revelation of God in Christ than any 
which had come to Elimelech and Naomi, are there 
not some in our churches who, not famine-struck 
nor for sheer life, but for trifling allurements of 
pleasure, convenience, repute, applause or gain, 
would venture some like defiance of some will of 
God ? Some like desertion of His People ? Some 
kindred insult to His honor ? 



Ruth 17 

There is a Christian man doing a business which 
he has no right to touch with so much as a finger. 
His life is in it. He has defied God and moved 
over into Moab ! There is one doing a business, 
right enough in itself, but in methods and on 
principles that defy God's law. He has gone over 
into Moab. There is a woman chasing tinselled, 
painted, enamelled, naked fashions which Chris- 
tian woman has no right to follow. She has turned 
her back on Zion and God and moves in Moab 
and is, more is the pity, bringing up her children 
there, or having Moabitish servants do it for her. 
Here are at least nominal Christian folk chasing 
hungrily after every toy, vanity, pleasure of 
world, flesh and Devil, saying, " Shall we stay 
here under the shadow of Christ's church and 
wing, and mope and starve and see these gay 
things out there ? Come, let us up and off" and 
out to Moab!" And they go, — flocking, they 
and theirs, — which is worse! That they who 
are of Israel should rear their children as half 
heathens and idolators, as in Moab ! Do not let 
us, then, put too much blame on Elimelech and 
Naomi, that they in their blind, confused old 
time, their but very partial light, and their great 
temptation, should have turned their backs on a 
people, — God's people by His election, indeed, — 
but not very much yet by their own choice, and 
about as much hatchelled by His judgments as 
blessed in His favors, and gone to the hills of stout, 
safe and stable — though idolatrous — Moab; that 
they should have disregarded a command of His 



1 8 Ruth 

which seemed to them very inconvenient and not 
very important and gone just over the border into 
Moab to save themselves from very great and very 
imminent sufferings and perils. Precisely, who is 
quite qualified for the first stone-flinging? Martyr- 
stuff is not common! The prophet-preacher does 
not moralize about their sin. Perhaps they did 
wisely, then ? But see ! He writes down a fact 
here of, it may be, some solemn significance. 

Elimelech did not starve nor meet any further 
inconvenience in Israel and Bethlehem, but he 
presently died in Moab ! And Jehovah, in those 
days, however He may have forgotten it in ours, 
certainly did take a strong, clear hand in the 
affairs of men. Elimelech soon died in Moab. 
May be it was not wise of him in his mere human 
desire, judgment, and will, to defy the command 
of God, turn his back on His people and move to 
Moab. It looks like that. That is worth thinking 
on. Verily, it looks as if it would have been worth 
his while to take his chances with God and His 
people. 

Moses did better when he, in harder case, 
chose affliction with His people rather than a 
place aud heirdom in the palaces of kings. I 
do believe that it is worth a man's while to take 
all the chances with God and His church rather 
than against them. He, with one, or without one, 
is the majority in this universe. Things have got 
to go His way, and all that will not do that must 
crash and burn. And while you are thinking on 
it, are there not in our time many and many of 



Ruth 19 

these chasers out into Moab who have come to 
grievous hurt of it? To sin, shame, and a tem- 
poral ruin ? To wreck of character, name, and 
even to death in spiritual things ? Dead names, 
are there not, on our church lists ? Can you get 
more than half of the people on your church rec- 
ords to answer the roll-call to duty for instant 
service ? Dead names on the lists ; dead weights 
on the church's hands ; dead wood to clutter the 
clear flow of the river of salvation ! Souls so 
dead that no voice can wake them to privilege or 
obligation — so dead that one fears that they will 
never so much as hear the sound of the trumpet 
of the First Resurrection ! 

When you think of it, friends, conscious of 
having run a good deal into Moab after its van- 
ities, idols, sins, — when you think seriously of 
it — are you not getting something numb, insen- 
sible, incapable of spiritual motion already, — 
cold, cold in hand and foot and limb, — a chill 
creeping, creeping clear up to the heart ? This, 
my friend, this is — what? Is it dying or a 
paralysis from which one may recover? Is it 
Elimelech's doom upon a sorer than Elimelech's 
sin ? Would it not be wise for you to come 
straight back to Israel and Israel's God to-day, 
without a moment's hesitancy ? Come ! I am 
persuaded it would be wise. Come and bring 
back with you sons and daughters of Moab as 
well as your own, to trust under the wings of our 
God ! Come now, for it was not long after Elitn- 
elech went to Moab that he died. I am afraid 



20 Ruth 

that some of us may have been over there about 
as long as we ought to expect the divine patience 
to let us live there ! 

Elimelech was dead. It might have been well 
then for the sons if Naomi had taken the solemn 
hint and gone back to God and Israel. But the 
sons were grown. They had gotten well used to 
Moab and liked it. If they had ever had any 
particular love for Bethlehem they had forgotten 
it. They had found their friends and formed 
their attachments over here. In truth, two fair 
daughters of the idolatrous race had found lodg- 
ment in their hearts: Orpah the "Fawn," and 
Ruth the ' ' Rose. " ' ' A little difference in race, ■ ' 
they said, ' ' but what of that ? Moab is descend- 
ed from Lot anyway, and so of kindred.' ' "I 
hope we know that it is a good thing to mingle 
the qualities — the strength, beauty and blood of 
diverse strains,' ' said Mahlon. And Chilion an- 
swered, " Aye, aye, my brother " ; and then, "A 
trifle difference, too, in religion, may be, but 
these people have treated us well, enough better 
than the Jews treat strangers. They are just as 
good as we. What is a little matter of belief, 
anyway ? These folks honestly believe in Baal 
and Moloch and Ashtaroth. It doesn't matter 
what a man believes if he be sincere. It is the 
straight life that tells. Then these sweet little 
women ! They are enough better than we [and 
right true that was, too] and worth all the shrill 
Jewesses in Bethlehem. They are of good stock, 
too, and so fair, and they love us. No matter if 



Ruth 2 1 

there be a bit of difference in religion. We 
haven't enough of that to make any great con- 
trast/ ' " Aye, aye, brother, you are wiser than 
your years," answered Mahlon ; " and those same 
little maidens, — we will marry them, in right 
honest fashion and with right good will. You 
shall set your Rose in your bosom and I will take 
my Fawn to my arms, let come what will." 
Well, what would you have had these boys do 
but marry them? And they did it, doubtless, 
with great merry-make, over there amongst the 
hills of Moab, very likely with some " harmless M 
ceremonies of libation to the goddess of heathen 
love. To be sure there was an old-time statute 
of Jehovah that they should do no such thing — 
denouncing hurt against it. But what of that ? 
Shall not a man marry the woman he loves, or a 
woman the man she loves, when he woos her and 
she can ? Besides, Mahlon and Chilion have be- 
come pretty well used by this time to disregard- 
ing the statutes of Jehovah. 

Shall divergence of religious faith bar marriage 
between loving hearts ? Mahlon and his brother 
thought not, set their judgment against the com- 
mand of God. Naomi evidently approved, and 
the wives proved sweet, gentle and gracious wo- 
men, enough better than any of their own country- 
women would have been, they doubtless thought. 
Who shall say that the thing was not well and 
wisely done ? The Prophet-preacher does not 
preach about their sin, but only states a signifi- 
cant fact. Mahlon and Chilion both presently 



22 Ruth 

died childless, out of the loving arms of their 
sweet wives and of their mother, over there in the 
home in Moab. And in those days, however 
he may have forgotten it now, Jehovah did 
take a clear, strong hand in the affairs of men, 
and took pains, apparently, to see to it that diso- 
bedience should not seem the way of blessedness. 
May be he does not mind it now, but he used to 
do so. And it is singular that these three men 
of this family should have died so on the heels of 
their disobedience. Hark, now ! I am not draw- 
ing from this the lesson, which some would be sure 
to do, and which some of you may be expecting 
of me, that no Christian should ever encourage 
or marry an unrenewed suitor. While this was 
a very necessary requirement for the Jews of the 
olden time, surrounded on every hand by all 
grossness of idolatry, to which they were them- 
selves mightily prone, I do not believe that it is 
a prohibition for Christians in our time, though I 
do believe that the chance of a blessed life in 
marriage and of a holy, heavenly home on earth, 
stands largely in the Christian character of the 
husband and the wife, the father and the mother. 
I believe that if there be no sympathy and union 
in these vastest and most tender common con- 
cerns of two souls in marriage, there can not be 
that highest and fullest felicity which God means 
when of twain he would make one flesh and of 
two souls one life. Out of unison in these great 
sections of heart, life, labor, hope and aim, there 
cannot be that complete harmony which is the 



Ruth 23 

supreme happiness of this wedded life. Separated 
so in character, interest and, alas, in destiny, how 
full of fear and pain must life be, and death ! 
May God of his heavenly grace grant it, that 
every Christian wife's husband and ever Christ- 
ian husband's wife may come speedily to love and 
trust and rejoice in the blessed Christ ! Then 
these homes shall know a holy gladness in which 
they never shined before. 

The only lesson which I am drawing is simply 
this, that not for any motive nor on any plea is 
there safety, wisdom, or hope of good in neglect- 
ing or transgressing the known will of God. 

Stricken Naomi ! Her husband dead, her sons 
in their graves in unhallowed soil ! Stripped of 
her beloved, her possessions gone ! Nearer now 
to hunger and nakedness than ever before ; with- 
out support, protection, youth, vigor or courage, 
in those first days of her crushing woe ! Her 
heart, I think, began to be very sore for her part 
in the disobediences which have come to such 
disaster. O Naomi ! Stricken through and 
through, subdued, broken, turn you now to Israel 
and Israel's God — your forsaken people and your 
forsaken God ! Jehovah has given His people 
prosperity, plenty and peace. You are self-outcast, 
very naked, utterly needy and utterly helpless. 
Turn now thought, eyes, heart, feet, back towards 
those despised hills of Judea, those mountains of 
Zion, on which gloriously the morning sun, but 
more radiantly the light of God's favor glows, in* 
whose vales and on whose shining slopes dwell 



24 Ruth 

the chosen, happy people who through tribulation 
waited patient for the Lord till he should visit 
them with mercy, — who through darkness of all 
the night of their trouble, still believed and obeyed, 
and the sun of a splendid morning has dawned 
upon them. Naomi, Naomi ! They that wait on 
Jehovah in a patient suffering and obedience find 
blessedness alway. They who break away from 
the divine direction always stumble and come to 
grief, first or last. Naomi, perhaps there be bet- 
ter days for you yet in Israel. There is nothing 
for you here. May be you will find some poor 
wreckage of your old estate in Bethlehem. Jubilee 
coming may restore. Israel is careful of inherit- 
ances and kindly to its poor, then as now. The 
experiment of Moab is dead failure, — utter disaster 
any way. So, lonely, poor, helpless, broken with 
intolerable sorrow, full of misery, convicted in the 
great deep soul of her, for after all it was that 
kind of a soul, of her folly and her sin ; sick of 
empty, grave-filled Moab, homesick for her own 
people and her God, she turns towards the shining 
hills of Judah — away from Moab and the idols, 
towards Israel and Jehovah ! 

These two tender human hearts of Orpah and 
Ruth, stricken by the same blows that have 
broken Naomi, aye, they may come with her if 
they will, but she will walk the weary way back 
to God. These graves of husband and sons? 
Even them will she leave to walk her way in 
heart-break back to Israel and to God. I can see 
her, away there through the solemn vista of the 



Ruth 25 

ages, weeping, with Orpah and Ruth at her knees, 
weeping by the graves, spreading her hands on 
the turf and kissing the sod made sacred by the 
sleep it shelters. I see, then, the far-off look come 
into her furrowed but yet strong, beautiful, and 
noble face. She sees in her vision the sunset on 
the hills of Judah and the towers of Bethlehem. 
She is hearing the chant of the Priests in the 
Court of the Tabernacle and beholding the smoke 
of the Evening Sacrifice and the fragrant Incense 
from the altars of the God of her fathers. She is 
remembering how in the old days she, with 
Elimelech and Mahlon and Chilion used to go up 
together, proud and joyful, with the thronging 
thousands, to make their yearly offerings and 
render their grateful worship. " I will arise and 
go ' ' is the final resolution of her chastened soul. 
She tells it her weeping daughters, I think, there 
by the graves. Small need has she of preparation, 
for they are very poor, and the abjectly poor can 
move without inconvenience. And she must go 
afoot, to throw herself empty-handed upon her 
.people and her God. Strong and final in her de- 
cisions, she is ready by the morning for her weary 
journey — her face set Zionward. Naomi, after 
long self-will and error, separation from God and 
His people and His courts ; after long, — and, to 
her poor heart, terrible, — discipline of pain, pov- 
erty and desolating sorrow, with face set God- 
ward, is walking humbly, penitently, and all un- 
wittingly towards her glory, riches, peace and 
fame ! Here we must leave her now, only stop- 



26 Ruth 

ping, with no great art, for it needs little, to apply 
one reflection more. 

The Church in every age and generation has, 
how many souls none can number, fitly typified 
by this Naomi in her disobedience and departure ; 
and many others, though not so many, like her in 
their sore and long chastisement, and many, 
albeit fewer still, like her in their penitent and 
broken-hearted return to peace and rest with 
Christ and His people. Many bear the name of 
Christ, hold some loose notion of loyalty, but 
separate themselves much from his own, from His 
ordinances and His Spirit, go away from their 
Zion into Moab for their fellowships and true 
heart-life and home, till they have, conscious^, 
little of life in Him, little of fellowship, joy or 
peace in His presence, communion or Spirit. 
They are walking after the devices of their own 
hearts, cold, careless, in the world and of it, 
dwelling at ease, not in Zion but in Moab ! One 
of two things now. They may be left at ease, 
untroubled, to burial in Moab, as not Christ's at 
all, as "let alone/ ' abandoned to their fate. 
They have chosen finally and must abide their 
choice. But if they be really Christ's, then surely 
as Heaven is pitiful and Christ is kind, will they 
be roused and tossed and driven by keen and 
winnowing troubles. Naomi had been lost with 
the idolaters over there, her name blotted out 
from the records of Israel and the book of God, 
but Elimelech died, Mahlon died, Chilion died, 
her living was taken away. So by sharpest 



Ruth 27 

handling of tribulation she was brought again to 
herself and her loving Lord. 

O wanderer from your vows and your Christ, if 
you will not be won back by His patient mercies, 
sure as that Christ loves and salvation waits you, 
He will commission severities to bring you back, 
that in depth of trouble you may turn with a 
bleeding soul to His feet ! He may touch you in 
estate that prosperities wither and fortunes vanish, 
or in your flesh till it be weakening to decay, or 
in heart and home till the beloved fade away, or 
in your ambitions to crumble them. He may 
suffer that you fall into gross sins, so to appall 
you to shame and repentance, to His feet and life 
in Him. It took a fall into adultery and murder 
to bring David back from his lusts. Thousands 
from behind prison bars, or out of the disgrace 
and horror of outrageous offenses have fled afresh 
to their long-forsaken Lord ! In truth, there be 
perhaps many in the church, — self-confident, cor- 
rect, at ease, whom nothing is so likely to startle 
into sense of peril and waken into a true life in 
Christ as some great lapse into gross sin. Would 
one of these men but steal a sheep and be caught 
at it, a prophet of the Lord could get down on 
him and be effective. "You miserable sinner and 
hypocrite ! In the Church, indeed ! That stolen 
sheep there ! Tremble ! Cry to God or perish ! " 
And, indeed, out there far away from Christ, 
worldly, unseeking for divine grace, lured of the 
Devil, here is the most likely way of the saving 
mercy of God. But, somehow, to every one of 



28 Ruth 

us in Christ's name, who is cold and far off, unless 
won by His mercies, will come to search us out, 
sorrowful and sharp awakening, breaking us into 
penitence and return, subduing us to Himself and 
bringing us to the fresh salvation. Naomi, broken 
by sorrow, has set her face towards the eternal 
light. Pray God it be so, at all cost of salutary 
pain, to every wanderer, astray in any Moab ! 



Ruth 29 



CHAPTER II 

THE PARTING, THE CLEAVING AND THE 
DEPARTURE. 



And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return 
from following after thee : for whither thou goest, I will go ; 
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall be my 
People, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and 
there will I be buried : the Lord do so to me, and more also, if 
aught but death part thee and me. — Ruth. 



The former chapter left Naomi going forth out 
of "the place where she was" toward Israel. 
Her array was in the habiliments of poverty and 
long-worn woe. Her face was grand in its 
strength, its sorrow, its repentance and its God- 
ward purpose. More than ten years ago she 
had trodden the same path, from God, with her 
husband and her sons, in self-will, presumption 
and disobedience. Now, having eaten the bitter 
fruits of that sad mistake, having looked her last 
upon the graves of her best beloved, she is faced 
back again in poverty, penitence and brokenness 
of heart. Toward Zion, O Naomi, from any land 
of wandering, for any reason, it is well to be 



30 Ruth 

faced. Thitherward, through any pain, to be 
found walking. So be brave and steadfast. But to 
be walking alone ! Were but Elimelech, now, and 
Mahlon and Chilion, with thee thou wert blessed 
among women. But she is not alone, as she 
emerges from the stone house where she has lived 
and from the massive gates of the old, walled 
town. For that land of Moab is a strange old 
land. When Israel returned from Egypt, now 
four hundred years ago, they found it full of 
great, walled towns, warlike and formidable. Rem- 
nants yet ruled and warred among them of the 
giant races of the earlier centuries. The Moabites 
were descendants of Lot, and so not wholly aliens. 
They were spared in the destructions which fell 
on many of the neighbor tribes at the Israelitish 
incoming. But the Jewish prophets of a later age 
are full of denunciations of utter destruction for 
Moab. "The cities shall be wasted, without in- 
habitant, and the houses without man and the 
land be utterly desolate," says Isaiah. "De- 
struction shall come upon all the cities of the land 
of Moab, far and near," says Jeremiah. "I have 
sworn by myself," saith the Lord, "that Bozrah 
shall become a desolation and a reproach, a waste, 
a curse, and all the cities thereof shall be per- 
petual wastes," and so on and on, through chap- 
ter after chapter, of prophet after prophet, is de- 
nounced the wholesale and signal ruin of Moab. 
Yet everywhere, according to these same prophets, 
the cities are to be left standing, but in awful sol- 
itude. " Give wings to Moab," cries one, in his 



Ruth 31 

exalted vision, " that it may flee and get away, for 
the cities thereof shall be desolate without any to 
dwell therein.' ' And another: "The defenced 
cities shall be desolate and left like a wilderness. 
There shall the calf feed and there shall he lie 
down. The palaces shall be forsaken, and the 
towers and forts thereof shall be for dens forever, — 
a joy of wild asses, — a pasture for flocks." 

For two thousand years this splendid and fer- 
tile region east of the Jordan has been a monu- 
ment to prophetic foresight, an utter desolation. 
Her lofty plains are grand as ever, her pasturage 
as green, her soils as fertile and her climate as 
matchless. But scarce a foot save that of the 
wandering Bedouin has been suffered to traverse 
it. The prophet said, " I will send unto him the 
wanderers and will cause him to wander ; will 
empty his vessels and break his bottles, and 
make him fly to the mountains and the rocks." 
All has been literally fulfilled. Whoever sowed, 
the wandering Bedouin reaped. Whoever pas- 
tured, he has eaten the herds. And to-day it is 
a land crowded fuller of cities than almost any 
other, cities on glorious plains and crests and hill- 
side slopes, but "without inhabitant." From a 
single summit an explorer tells us that he saw 
thirty of these old and empty cities. The book 
of Joshua shows how they were crowded together, 
and the modern explorer finds the same towns 
that Joshua did, " walled and high and strong." 
The walls are of black basalt, in huge blocks. 
The city gates are of massive stones, two-leaved 



32 Ruth 

gates, each leaf ten feet high and five feet wide, 
and from ten to twenty inches thick. The houses 
are of slabs of the same material ; rooms ample in 
dimensions, often twelve to fifteen feet high ; 
floors, ceilings and roofs of long slabs reaching 
like timbers from wall to wall ; doors like those 
of the city walls, only lighter, and swinging in 
grooves. Cities remain, having thus their walls, 
streets, and perfectly preserved houses for fifty or 
a hundred thousand people, but tenantless, grown 
over with thorns and briars and all luxuriant 
vegetation. Out of them the intruder will startle 
bats and reptiles and wild things of every sort, 
but no man, unless he unhappily stumble on a 
wild Bedouin band, which he would not want to 
meet. These are the very towns, streets, houses 
which have stood unchanged from before the 
Exodus. Some of them have been the scenes of 
the battles of the Jewish occupation. Through 
them have throbbed the swelling tides of a hot 
and sturdy life, the deep traces of which are rut- 
ted into the massive blocks of the street pave- 
ments and worn into the thresholds of old door- 
ways. The ashes of Vesuvius did not more close- 
ly veil the homes of Pompeii for eighteen hundred 
years than has the curse of God covered out of 
human sight these homes of a far more ancient 
people for a longer time. These homes a giant 
race builded for itself four thousand years ago, 
and they will stand unchanged till he shake not 
the earth only, but the heavens to wake the dead, 
when time shall be no more. 



Ruth 33 

The very threshold over which Naomi trod with 
face set now Zionward, may yet be pressed by 
any chance foot of vagrant Bedouin or patient 
investigator of these pre-historic antiquities. Out 
of these old, mysterious regions shall yet come 
many a proof of the verity of our own Scriptures, 
which will rebuke the scoffers and help grandly 
to bring science and faith at one again. These 
proofs, as you all know, have begun to come — 
the great Moabite stone in some sort the herald 
of the grand procession of witnesses rising from 
the solemn dust of the graves of the ages and 
civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, Arabia 
and the regions of the Hittite race. The explorers 
of our own country and of the world are bringing 
us as fruit of their enthusiasm, energy and patient 
work, the first volumes of a hitherto pre-historic 
world, full not only of fascination, but of verifi- 
cation of the sacred validity of the foundations of 
our holy faith. Moab stands in its every deso- 
late but unruined city, its every splendid plain 
and buttress of rocky mountain peak and range, 
a vast, sombre and awful monument of prophecy 
absolutely fulfilled. 

As Naomi emerges from the house of her so- 
journ and passes through the massive gates of the 
city she is not alone. There appears no evidence 
of consultation or pre-arrangement by which she 
knows the intention of her daughters. But as 
she goes, oriental courtesy, then as now, requires 
that the kindred, or even the host, shall go a cer- 
tain distance with the departing guest or kins- 



34 Ruth 

man, — shall make even as if they would go the 
whole journey. At the end of a certain distance 
the same courtesy requires that the departing 
friend shall remonstrate against their further in- 
convenience. The attendants will insist on go- 
ing further. The friend will entreat and com- 
mand that they turn back. After many protes- 
tations of disappointment and sorrow they return 
and the guest goes on alone. A very transparent 
show, indeed, for all is set down in the code of 
good manners of that foolish old-time society. 
One can abuse the Moabites, let us hope, without 
danger. Would that all the transparent social 
hypocricies which did not get buried in the dim 
old ages were as innocent and sweet as this. But 
they are not. You may have heard of some, less 
blameless, as practiced yet, even in our luminous 
and Christian time. 

Of course, therefore, Orpah and Ruth go forth 
of the house and the town with their mother-in- 
law. Naomi may from that have gathered no 
surmise as to their ultimate intent, nor did Orpah 
know the deep, true heart of Ruth. By and by 
the limit of courtesy's distance is reached. The 
heart of stricken Naomi has a task almost heav- 
ier than that of tearing away her last loving look 
from the graves of her dead. She must now rend 
herself from her living ones, — these daughters of 
her love, these sharers of all her griefs, who by 
their truth and gentleness, — their love for the 
dead and for her, — have so deserved and won the 
fullness of her tenderest affection. 



Ruth 35 

Just here is a good place to say that there is a 
hateful, — even a hideous, — sneer current in this 
world, not of late only, but of old, as if the moth- 
er-in-law were an evil genius and sour apple of 
discord in the home. The papers are full of quips 
and gibes, and all the wits resonant of jests at 
their expense. You will recognize what is meant 
as illustrated by the story of the artist who had 
painted a most spirited sketch of extreme hilarity. 
Everybody in it is a-dance, tossing wine cups, 
swinging hats, clapping hands, shouting for 
glee. The very cat and dog and parrot and the 
pictures on the w r alls are making eccentric show 
of sympathy in the mirth. The painter showed 
it to an artist friend, asking what name he should 
give it. The friend, gravely stroking his chin 
ponderingly, replied, "Well, I think you will have 
to call it 'The Death of a Mother-in-Law.' " 
That passes for wit. It is something nearer sac- 
rilege. Doubtless in this, as in ever)' other hu- 
man relationship, there are phenomenal instances, 
— true monstrosities, — for riddance of which the 
world is the merrier. But what name on earth, 
after that of his own mother, ought to be more 
tenderly sacred to any man than that of her who 
reared for him the very soul and body of her who 
is dearer to him than his own life ? than that of 
her whose own qualities inherited and trained 
have become the beauty that won his heart and 
make the joy of his home? What horrible 
schism between husband and wife is that when 
the face adored by the one is abhorred by the 



36 Ruth 

other as that of the mother-in-law ! What out- 
rage on every sentiment of gratitude, tenderness, 
human nature itself is it that such senseless 
odium should have fixed itself upon a relation- 
ship so inevitable, so fit for joy and so full of 
help ! White haired fathers and mothers, giving 
their children in marriage, are not losing but win- 
ning sons and daughters beloved, to bless and 
warm their loving old hearts and smooth the 
pathway for their trembling feet up towards 
heaven. Bless God, ye highly favored, upon 
whose earthly home, for many a year may shine 
the sweet light of the happy and venerable face 
of the father or the mother of either the husband 
or the wife. Make that face glad and that life 
radiant by every careful token of filial courtesy, 
gratitude and love. Let the ' ( in-law ' ' be forgot- 
ten, — dropped forever ! No more is she " mother- 
in-law ' ' than are ye * * husband and wife-in-law ! ' ' 
Let it be quite impossible for others to know, or 
for her to discover, from your loving behaviors 
to which of you she was " mother M first, — being 
now true mother to true children both and to 
children's children as well, if that be the further 
grace of God. " Honor thy father and thy 
mother' ' is a divine command concerning the 
parents of the other, larger, or better half of thy 
true self. 

For ten years Naomi and these daughters, 
widows now all three, have been growing into 
each other's hearts, and of late have been all in 
all to each other, eating the same bitter bread of 



Ruth 37 

poverty, weeping beside the same graves, broken 
in heart and hope under the same flail-strokes of 
calamity. The mother is departing from Moab 
forever. The daughters, in true courtesy and 
affection, have gone with her to or beyond the 
conventional bound of companionship. May be 
they have reached one of the mountain brows 
from which they look down on the valley of the 
Jordan, over against the hillsides of Judah, and 
back to the broken plains and mountain regions 
of Moab. Now, Naomi, summon your courage ! 
This is a rough journey for your woman's feet 
alone. Will these rude and lawless times regard 
even your gray hairs ? Will your naked poverty 
be a defense ? Or have you come fully back to 
trust in the shadow of the wings of Jehovah, to 
believe them of so wide a stretch and so tender a 
love as to cover and enfold thee in all this lonely 
journey ? But first and rougher than the journey 
is the parting. See how grandly she has nerved 
herself to meet it! "Go, return, each to her 
mother's house. Jehovah deal kindly with you 
as ye have dealt with the dead and with me ! 
Jehovah grant that ye may find rest each in the 
house of her husband ! ' ' Then she embraced and 
kissed them and they lifted up their voice and 
wept. Oriental weeping is ever a lifting up of 
the voice to weep, none of your subdued, covert 
grief to be hidden, detected by the stealthy tear, 
the smothered sob, the heaving breast. That 
were, somehow, for the Oriental, to do discredit 
to the cause of pain. Their way is outburst, pos- 



38 Ruth 

itive " lifting up of the voice to weep " with all 
violent gesture of woe. 

Occasion of grief to these young widows there was 
now, aside from the mere pain of this parting. The 
position of a widow, especially a childless widow, 
in Oriental life, is narrow, servile and very bitter. 
You notice that Naomi says, "Return to your 
mother's house." They will be secluded in the 
women's apartments altogether; will be clothed in 
mean apparel ; kept at hard and servile drudgery. 
The burning of Indian widows on the funeral 
pyres of their dead husbands was nigh to mercy — 
escape was it from so tormented a life as that of 
an Oriental widow. Orpah and Ruth would go 
home to their mothers unwelcome, to be felt as 
a burden and a shame. A woman was of little 
account, unless somebody's wife or somebody's 
mother. A widowed, childless woman, alas ! Well 
then did Naomi pray, "The Lord deal kindly 
with you ! ' ' They had need of answer to that 
prayer. 

How touching the praise, "As ye have dealt 
with the dead and with me." Draw from it such 
picture as you may of the happy home of Mahlon 
and Chilion and their wives and their mother. 
The very point of Naomi's prayer is that the Lord 
may manifest His mercy to them by giving them 
rest, not in the house of their mothers — no hope 
of that. That is quite past praying for, but ' ' in 
the house of her husband." A girl born in an 
Oriental home is a nuisance. It is doubted if she 
have a soul even. So they have had the way of 



Ruth 39 

casting them out to perish, throwing them into 
rivers, strangling them, selling them, getting 
them out of the way as easiest they could. If let 
live their parents at once set about arranging 
marriages for them. They are betrothed, if pos- 
sible, in infancy, and married in mere childhood, 
then toys while youth and beauty remain, in 
something better estate when motherhood comes ; 
but widowed, not rarely before womanhood, are 
drudges and slaves to the end of their wretched 
existence. So Naomi's prayer is the very and 
the only one which the case prescribed — rest, 
which women of our time would think of a won- 
drous poor sort, in the house of her husband. 
The Jew was the best husband in the world of 
those days, and the Jewish wife the best placed 
of all ancient womankind. 

You see the picture. "Go, return, my 
daughters,' ' spoken with a quivering heart and a 
faltering voice. The prayer, "Jehovah be kind 
to you, my daughters." The tender praise, "As 
ye have dealt with the dead and with me." She 
bends to kiss them, holding both in one heart- 
broken embrace, leaving them forever. They can 
not come to her in Israel, nor she to them in Moab. 
It is the last farewell. No wonder the flood-gates 
give way and the three widowed women lift up 
their voices and weep together in that last embrace. 
Regaining something of self-control, the younger 
women still clinging to their mother, cry, " Nay, 
but surely we will return with thee unto thy peo- 
ple." This, now, is more than Oriental courtesy, 



40 Ruth 

as the mother sees, looking into their tearful, 
earnest, loving faces upturned to hers. They will 
do it ! They will do it ! How her stricken heart 
leaps and flutters at the thought ! " I and my 
daughters, in Israel, under Jehovah's wings ! 
Joy ! Blessedness ! Now is my old heart young 
again ! ' ' 

Just here we come to proof of Naomi's most 
thoughtful heroism and supremely self-forgetful 
love. She calls to mind the position in which 
these Moabitish women will stand in Israel, looked 
at askance, despised, barred from social equality, 
prohibited from Jewish marriage. She will be 
unable to provide for or protect them. They will 
be disabled from providing for themselves, yet 
young and fair, in any pure and honest way. 
What can be for them in Israel but a servile life 
or a life of shame ? These sweet women, these 
beloved women, — the Fawn and the Rose of Moab ! 
Nay, better, their hard fate in Moab ! Cost her 
what it may, she will send them back. But how 
shall she bluntly tell them how they, the beloved 
of her two Israelitish sons, will be despised and 
outcast of her people, insulted, outraged? She is 
too fine in fiber for that. So she must indirectly show 
it, telling them that there is no chance of standing 
for them in Israel but in Levirate marriage, even 
if that were permitted to a non-Jewish woman. 
Had she other sons possibly the rulers might suffer 
them to take their brothers' widows for their 
wives, and so life in Judah might become possible 
for them. That would be the only way of it. 
She then proceeds to dwell on the natural impossi- 



Ruth 41 

bility of such a way of escape. You will see, 
therefore, in that passage concerning the impossi- 
bility of the Levirate marriage, a genuine delicacy 
and tenderness of consideration so superb and ab- 
solute as perhaps to have escaped your notice. 
You may even have thought the matchless deli- 
cacy of it indelicate ! 

Catch again the profound pathos and self- 
forgetting of that final cry of her great, brave 
heart. " Nay, my daughters, for it grieveth me 
sore, for your sakes that the hand of the Lord is 
gone out against me." Again they lifted up their 
voices and wept together. Orpah is convinced, 
persuaded. She rises up, kisses once more the 
venerable and beloved face, turns away, drawing 
closely her woman's veil over her face and goes 
weeping back to her mother's house. She doubt- 
less thought that Ruth would follow soon. But 
in the vastness of her pain she could best walk 
alone. So she went her way, alone, back to her 
mother's house, back first to the grave of Mahlon 
and then to her mother's house, back to her peo- 
ple and their gods ! She walks, a solitary and 
sorrowful figure, out of sight and knowledge of 
the world forevermore. Adieu, fair Orpah ! 
Jehovah deal kindly with thee, as thou didst with 
the dead and with Naomi ! God grant that we 
find thee also, by and by, amongst the many saved 
through the loving contact of His people from out 
every tongue and race under the whole heaven ! 
Saith not our I^ord, " Other sheep have I, not of 
this fold' '? 



42 Ruth 

Now, Ruth, "Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone 
back to her people and unto her gods. Return 
thou after thy sister-in-law.' ' It was like com- 
mand, which at Naomi's lips, Ruth was wont to 
obey unquestioning, heretofore and hereafter. 
Command with good reason under it, a wise 
and loving heart behind it and the example of 
the elder sister to enforce it. A sacred authority, 
the very voice that her dear Chilion had always, 
let us hope, made reverent haste to heed. So, 
sweet Ruth, make an end of that scene there on 
the brow of Moab, — that scene so exquisite and 
touching, — the two locked in each others' embrace 
and the third, yonder walking her weeping way 
back to her graves, her mother and her gods. But 
Ruth, wayward now and wilful, for but this once, 
through the greatness of her love, lifts her eyes full 
to her mother's face and makes answer, — greater, 
sweeter, tenderer answer than any recorded in liter- 
ature of the race besides ; the formula from that day 
to this for a deathless, self-forgetting and all-resist- 
less love. "And Ruth said," drawing backward 
by the length of her white arm, and lifting her 
eyes full to the mother's face, " Entreat me not to 
leave thee, or to return from following after thee : 
for whither thou goest, I will go ; and where thou 
lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall be my peo- 
ple, and thy God my God : where thou diest, will 
I die, and there will I be buried : the Lord do so 
to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee 
and me ! ' ' 

As Naomi looked into the dark but glowing 



Ruth 43 

face, into those liquid, lustrous eyes and felt the 
sweep and majesty of her matchless tenderness, 
she knew that the thing was settled past human 
power to alter it. She knew that she had found 
a soul greater than her own in the almightiness of 
womanhood, the power of devotion, the energy of 
self-sacrifice, the resistless will of a wholly loving 
purpose. Her heart gives one bound of utter joy — 
joy too vast for speech — and so, in silence together, 
Naomi and Ruth, they enter their brave and 
weary journey toward Zion — Israel, Jehovah's 
favor— toward riches, blessedness and fame. "So 
they two went until they came to Bethlehem." 
A rough, hard way, a long and weary way for 
two lone women, a perilous way withal. 

Beloved every way to Zion — to God's house 
and feet is safe, straight and walled. It is heaven- 
guarded. Angels hover over it for guidance and 
defense. It leads to present gladness and to future 
joy and eternal fame. If thou be a Naomi, far 
from God and His people, venture the hard and 
weary way back. If thou be of Moab, not yet at 
all of Israel, venture all, leave all, with brave, 
true heart like Ruth, the Rose of Moab; say to 
Christ's own, 4< Thy people shall be my people, 
and thy God my God." So all the way shall be 
heaven-guided, heaven-guarded, heaven-crowned, 
and there shall walk with you One holy and 
beautiful, like unto the Son of Man and the Son 
of God. O the long and matchless bliss toward 
which you may turn your feet to-night ! O the 
long and matchless woe from which you may turn 



44 Ruth 

them this hour ! God give you grace ! Come 
with us to Jesus* feet ! Come Home to the heart 
of God and of His own ! Let the spirit of the 
sweet, brave and gentle Ruth, the Rose of Moab, 
inspire you to a destiny as grand as hers ! 



Ruth 45 



CHAPTER III 

IN BETHLEHEM AT LAST. 

So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. — Ruth. 

How long the journey we do not know ; some 
days, at any rate, toiling down the rugged descents 
of Moab's mountains, fording the Jordan, crossing 
the plains of Jericho, making their way up the 
sharp wadies to the high Bethlehem levels — a 
severe and weary way for the two women. What 
fears assailed them — for wild men and wild beasts, 
in those primitive and disordered times, infested 
all these trails by which they must pass. Ruth's 
great grandson — the ruddy shepherd-boy in his 
later time, in these very defiles and wilds, to de- 
fend his flock, had to slay with his own hands a 
lion and a bear. What perils surrounded, what 
womanly fears assailed, or what succors gave 
them assurance that the ' ' Wings of Jehovah ' ' 
were outstretched above them, we know not. 
How their fearful hearts beat as night fell down 
out of heaven around them and they sought 
what shelter they might of human habitation, or 
thicket, or overhanging rock, and shrank together 
within or underneath it for disturbed and fright- 



46 Ruth 

ened slumber ! It may be that they were able, 
fearless of beast or man, to chant, in soft meas- 
ures amid the gathering shadows that ancient 
Psalm of Moses, ' ' L,ord, thou hast been our dwell- 
ing place in all generations, ' ' and so to lie down 
beneath the stars and His care in perfect trust. 
Or, if that Psalm be so old, it may be that the 
listening night heard them chaunting, — those 
houseless, wandering women, — " He that dwell- 
eth in the secret place of the Most High shall 
abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will 
say of the L,ord, He is my refuge and my fortress, — 
my God, in Him will I trust. * * * He shall 
cover thee with His feathers and under His wings 
shalt thou trust. * * * Thou shalt not be afraid 
for the terror by night nor for the arrow that flieth 
by day. He shall give His angels charge over 
thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall 
bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy 
foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the 
lion and the adder ; the young lion and the dragon 
shalt thou trample under thy feet. ' ' So they could 
sleep under the * ' shadow of the Almighty ' ' cov- 
ered warm with * ' His feathers ' ' in the peace of 
a perfect trust ' ' under His wings. ' ' Of the 
vicissitudes of their journey no hint is given in 
the story. This is all. "They left the place 
where they were," parted from Orpah, clave to- 
gether and went till they came to Bethlehem. 
They came up from the plains of Jericho by a 
steep, narrow and difficult gorge, not, as now, by 
way of Jerusalem, for that city was not yet in pos- 



Ruth 47 

session of Israel. The Ark and Tabernacle were 
still in Shiloh. 

As they emerge from the ravine and stand on 
the high open plain of Bethlehem a fair sight 
meets their eyes. Yonder to the east the rich 
valley of the Jordan and its beautiful river, which 
had fascinated Lot in his day, and the deep waters 
of the Dead Sea ; beyond, the fair mountains and 
familiar plains of Moab ; and, to the south, green 
hill and vale reaching away to the Mountains of 
Hebron ; to the west, broad, broken fields sloping 
up and down and off toward the Philistian plains 
and the western sea ; to the north, stretches of 
beautiful hill and valley towards the heights of 
snowy Hermon. Everywhither a glowing fer- 
tility and nigh matchless beauty. And yonder, 
on the southwestern slope of its fair hill-side sits 
Bethlehem, a delight to any beholder — to Naomi 
wondrous fair ! A little city of say four thousand 
inhabitants now, not more then ; a walled town, 
for they walled their villages against robbers and 
sudden incursions of enemies. The whole popu- 
lation of the region is within the walls at night, 
save the shepherds and such as watch the fields 
or abide by the threshing-floors and granaries and 
wine presses in harvest and vintage. 

But you must imagine Naomi's gladness at sight 
now of Bethlehem again, after more than ten years 
of absence and sorrow. "Home again ! Among 
my people, in God's country at last," throbbed 
her glad and grateful heart. Ruth's feeling, too, 
you must imagine, as she is under the shadow of 



48 Ruth 

the walls of this strange city, in a strange land, 
a gentile stranger, apart from the altars of her 
father's and her childhood's gods, with one only 
friend— the poor, powerless, and heart-broken 
mother of her Chilion, for whom, as not for him, 
she had forsaken all. Brave and loving Ruth, we 
will not blame you if there come over you now a 
great wave of home-sickness, nor yet if it keeps 
coming every now and then to your sorrowful 
heart for many a month of your poverty and labor 
and strangerhood amongst this peculiar people. 
But they press their way, dusty, weary, no doubt 
in singular attire, up to the little town, and 
through its gates. 

Tradition has it that as they entered the city 
they met a group of women returning from the 
burial of the first wife of Boaz ! and that from 
them came this first wondering, half-recogniz- 
ing question, "Is this Naomi?" Mere Jewish 
fiction, of course. You would not quite want 
to think of Boaz as consoling himself in three 
months, or four, with a new bride after loss of 
the wife of his youth ! To be sure such things 
happen even now, and that after the most violent 
shows of grief. But they make people shrug their 
shoulders and smile peculiarly, as evidently not 
the thing exactly. Yet I will say, just here and 
despite a good deal of fine-spun sentiment, that 
it is hard to see how it is better "for man to be 
alone ' ' after he has been once well wedded than 
it was before. If his experience in marriage was 
one of blessedness and ten-thousand sweet help- 



Ruth 49 

fulnesses in which his life was enriched and his 
heart got holy play and sweep, power and bigness 
which it could not else have gained, by every day 
of that dear union, and death has claimed his 
beloved out of heart and home ; if there be chil- 
dren, too, needing mother-care and love, there 
is no fitter thing than a second marriage nor any 
higher praise for the memory of the departed one. 
There be marriages and marriages. Marriages 
there may be so full of strife and selfishness, so 
ugly that should death break them, the survivor, 
having tried the fire, would not venture it again 
at any hazard. There be marriages so holy that 
the bereaved of their paradise lost, long for their 
paradise regained. And I say it is sin and shame 
to mock at the deepest grief man or woman can 
know beside the grave of wife or husband, be- 
cause, by and by, he makes a new marriage and 
finds home again on earth. By all the sweetness 
of the home that was will he yearn for home 
again. Had Socrates outlived Xantippe it is not 
likely that he would have adventured a new ex- 
perience with another wife. I always wondered 
that Abigail, the widow of the churlish Nabal, 
was so ready to marry again, even though it were 
with David. But she was a woman of great dis- 
cernment and could see that David was the exact 
antithesis in every respect of the miserly and 
cowardly old curmudgeon who had harried the 
life of her before. So she ventured it. Besides, 
she had not really so very much choice about it 
either, for David felt himself every inch a king 



50 Ruth 

and proposed to have things and wives much in 
his own way. If Boaz, then, had had a wife before 
and she had made life rich and blessed for him, 
and now was dead, it was very sensible in him 
and very respectful to the dead, for him, finding 
a Ruth, to marry her. Even so, Ruth did no 
wrong to the grave and memory of Chilion when 
she married Boaz. Nay, in Jewish custom and 
Jewish law, both being widowed and childless, 
were in some high sense bound to marry, and, 
from their kinship, to marry each other. But all 
this about the funeral train of a former wife is 
mere tradition of no account to us save as it has 
given chance for casual thought or two on a matter 
to which the pulpit does not often address itself. 

Of course her coming to the little town, proba- 
bly in the afternoon while the men were in the 
fields outside, would waken curiosity and the 
news of it would fly swiftly, and curious women 
would gather to ask questions and run to tell the 
news. We do not know whither Naomi had gone 
on her arrival ; perhaps to some shred of her old 
inheritance, claiming shelter, may be, under some 
corner of the old roofs of Elimelech, asking hos- 
pitality by her old rights of ownership. It may 
be that so her identity was first revealed and the 
women came to their news. " She had ownership 
here. At Jubilee her estate may come back to 
her." So they come and look in her face and 
question of each other and of her, ' ' Is this 
Naomi ?" 

* ' Naomi, ' ' in the familiar accents of the Hebrew 



Ruth 51 

tongue ! We do not know what her name had 
been in Moabitish speech. It may be that she 
had not heard that name since Elimelech held her 
hand in his chill fingers and turned his fast- 
darkening eyes to her and said, " Good-bye ! A 
long good-bye, Naomi, my Glory, my Joy !" 
and gasped and died ten years ago in Moab. The 
sons and daughters called her " Mother,' ' not 
Naomi. Sonowasthejewishwomensay "Naomi," 
with the sound come back, flooding the old mem- 
ories, and the meaning of the name, "my pleas- 
antness," "my delight," "my glory," and the 
sacred voices that used to speak it in love, she 
can not bear it, but cries, in a burst of deep and 
lofty grief, ' ' O call me not ' Naomi ' ! Call me 
( Marah ' [bitterness] ! For the Almighty hath 
dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full and 
the Lord hath brought me home again empty. 
Why call ye me then ' Delight,' seeing that the 
Lord hath testified against me and the Almighty 
hath afflicted me? " The women, I think, used 
just then no more importunate inquisitiveness, but 
bent themselves with quick and tender hearts to 
sympathy and the sacred duties of hospitality and 
comfort, washed their hands and feet, brought 
them some simple change of raiment, set before 
them fit food for their refreshment, and let them 
tell the story of their affliction thereafter as they 
would, or not at all if they would not. At any 
rate the true genius of mercy in relief of need is 
simply to relieve it, without much to-do or chatter 
of its soreness. True, kind women are like to 



52 Ruth 

find that out. The needy are often proud as well 
as poor, and sorer over the fact of their distress 
than over the actual pang of it. Remember that, 
when ye help them, especially if they have seen 
better days. 

To deal with grief, — with the bereaved and 
sorrowful, — do not crowd upon them wordy and 
ostentatious sympathy. Just sit down beside 
them, your heart full of sorrow for and with 
theirs. I have always admired that wonderful, 
subtle touch of nature by which Job's friends are 
made to sit by him in silence for seven days and 
nights. Had they, then, just got up and gone, 
saying never a word, it would have been much to 
Job's comfort and their credit, though we should 
have lost a magnificent philosophic and religious 
drama. Your soul full of sympathy ? If so, the 
sorrowing will know it. You will not need tell 
them much of it. Your coming tells them. The 
touch of your hand tells them. The tone of your 
voice, though you made it full of cheer ; the look 
on your face, though you have put a smile there 
for them, tells it even if you d9 not break out into 
a flood of words or of tears ! A heart in sorrow 
knows a heart in sympathy as steel knows the 
magnet, and takes strength and comfort of it 
through some medium subtler than words and the 
vibrations of the ether which they stir. So let 
the soul full of sympathy with the woeful go, sit 
by them, oftenest pouring upon their griefs the 
balm of a loving, tender, healing silence. Let 
them talk, if they will or can. Answer, speaking 



Ruth 53 

enough to help them pour out their burden, find- 
ing the relief which that may give. But if you 
have only a show of sympathy and sorrow to 
make, then, in God's name, keep off and away! 
Let the broken-hearted alone ! A sham show, 
then, the tinkling of the mockeries and lies, then ! 
The conventionalisms, the clatter of empty words, 
the grimaces of an unfelt woe, then ! Have done ! 
I say, if you have nothing but a conventional 
condolence to offer, then keep out of the homes 
where a real sorrow dwells, where something other 
than a conventional anguish has come to sit. 

Let us hope that these Oriental women had the 
kindliness and tact to let Naomi speak out her 
grief only when, and as, and if, her heart bade 
her. If Ruth was home-sick and downcast a bit, 
let us hope that they did not too often ask her 
"how she liked Bethlehem," and tell her that it 
had a magnificent climate and a tremendous peo- 
ple, and was so much better than Moab ! For 
then Ruth, having the spirit of a woman in her, 
as we are glad to know that she had, would have 
been sure to think, and likely to say, that every- 
thing in Moab was delightful and nothing in 
Bethlehem endurable ; and would have stood to it 
honestly and stoutly, at any rate till her marriage 
with Boaz, and perhaps after, on any little occa- 
sion when she might differ in opinion with her 
husband and desire to be effective upon him ! To 
be sure, be it for better or worse, in those good 
old times the wife had not quite so fair play for 
such effective differences of opinion with her hus- 



54 Ruth 

band as in these degenerate days. Not to differ 
sharply with him was much more peremptorily to 
her interest then than now. L,et us hope that the 
Bethlehem folk dealt wisely in this matter with 
the gentle stranger from Moab, come now to be at 
home among them, that she might the sooner ad- 
just herself to that. 

1 'Naomi,' ' "Marah," "Delight," "Bitterness"! 
Of old, and to this day, Bethlehem's women are 
famed for their beauty. So were those of Nazar- 
eth. Naomi, born to a family of name and repute, 
to all sweet prospects in life. To a family in Israel 
where children were esteemed the highest earthly 
blessing and honor ; where a quiver full of such 
arrows should entitle a man to place of repute that 
he might speak as judge with contestants in the 
gate of his city or as ambassador with the em- 
bassies of the enemy, — born so, no wonder the 
glad mother cried, "Let her be named 'My 
Delight,' 'My Glory,' 'Naomi'"! Lying a 
sweet babe in the mother's arms, drawing the 
nurture of a daily increasing beauty from her 
breasts, no wonder the mother clasped her close 
and murmured, "Naomi, My Blessedness!" 
Catching up and tossing the child high in air, 
marching proudly with the crowing, gleeful child 
on his shoulder, how the father shouted, "Naomi, 
m Y j°y> the light of my house !" Growing a 
fair, glad maiden, full of gentleness and love and 
beauty, unfolding from babe to child, from child 
to girl, from girl to maiden, from maiden to wo- 
man, the father and mother looking on and 



Ruth 55 

caressing her, were wont to murmur, with their 
hands on her raven hair, with fuller and ever deeper 
meaning, of ever richer content, " My Delight, 
Naomi!" 

So ought babes to come, blessed, welcomed, ex- 
ulted in, to the hearts and homes of women and 
men in every time. Alas for the unwomaning of 
wives who would not be mothers, and the un- 
manning of husbands to whom fatherhood is un- 
welcome ! Alas for the emptiness, vanity, false- 
hood of the home which chooses to lack the glory 
of trooping childhood, boyhood, maidenhood, 
through its heart and halls ! Alas the dimness, 
sorrow and loneliness of old age, about whose 
trembling knees no children and children's child- 
ren gather ! The glory and joy of great troops 
thronging around the silver heads and mellow 
hearts of grandfather and grandmotherhood ! 

As this Naomi grew to woman's rich and full 
estate, Elimelech came. He, too, said, with all 
a young man's ardor, "Naomi, my delight, my 
glory," and set her in his heart for joy, and 
above his life for crown, and in his home for wife. 
After many a moon of sweetness he clasped her 
one day with Mahlon in her arms and cried 
again, " Naomi, my glory ! " in the beauty of her 
motherhood ; and yet again with Mahlon in his 
hand and Chilion at her pillow he uttered the 
same holy greeting. As the sorrowful Naomi, a 
widow, and childless, looks back to that time, to 
the years of the growth of her boys under her 
own and Elimelech' s care, is it a wonder that her 



56 Ruth 

breaking heart wails, " I was full, full ! I went 
out full. Call me not now Naomi, but Marah. 
No beauty, no glory, but bitterness ! For the Al- 
mighty hath dealt very bitterly with me, and 
hath brought me back empty. Empty ! Elim- 
elech is dead in Moab. Mahlon is dead. Chilion 
is dead. Orpah has gone back to her mother and 
her gods. Bereft of husband and of children, 
aging and in utter poverty, — in despair ; so empty 
I come back again. Why call ye me Naomi ? 
The Iyord hath testified against me in sharp wit- 
ness. The Almighty hath afflicted me with flail- 
strokes of His uttermost anger. Call me Marah, 
very bitterness itself. ' ' It is the terrible outcry 
of a soul in the depths. 

Alas, friends, in this changeful, evil world, 
many a Naomi morning hath a day's decline, or 
even noon of Marah ! Many a child's glee turns 
to a maiden's wail of pain, or youth's oath of 
rage or sin or shame. Many a laughing maiden- 
hood of beauty sinks down through snares to sin 
and woe, under curse deep as hell. Many, by no 
fault of their own, but through sickness, poverty, 
marriage with men who grow drunken and bru- 
tal, fall into misery intolerable, squalor, hunger, 
rags and terrors, to which the grave is the only 
and the welcome covert. Many a fair bridal 
makes haste, through sin of one, or of two, to 
bickering, indifference, hatred, and the shame of 
separation or divorce, for which some States of 
our own Republic wear the crown of infamy over all 
the world ; or to suicide, in which we are gaining 



Ruth 57 

a like sad pre-eminence. Many another Naomi 
bridal and motherhood, through like ravaging of 
death, has come to life's even-tide or noon in 
emptiness and woe. Many a Naomi, through all 
the earth and in all its ages, is crying, " Call me 
not that, but Marah, for I am poor ; I am sick ; 
I am old ; I am alone ; I am very wretched and 
of impossible hard lot. Call me misery. Death 
is welcome." 

But remember! Naomi's misery and emptiness 
have returned her to her God and her people. In 
the very place of her terrible out-cry, in this very 
hour of her bitter despair, she is in the place 
and close to the hour of the returning tide of her 
blessings. Her miseries have redeemed her. The 
testimonies of the Lord against her and the afflic- 
tions of the Almighty have done their work and 
brought her to the threshold of her honors. So, 
all ye who drink the waters of bitterness. If ye 
but let them turn, or re-turn, you to your God 
and His people, or draw you closer, then your 
bitter cup shall prove to be the very cup of joy, 
of salvation, — the supremest good gift of an all- 
gracious Father. Whatever be the blackness of 
the darkness in which you sit, if it but lead you 
to reach out toward God, after Him and peace 
and good and light, then the morning stars are sing- 
ing for you and the Day-spring is come already. 
From what source soever the evil come, — your sin, 
your folly, or the mistake or crime of others, or 
some great plunge of ill-fortune, or some myste- 
rious providence, — still it matters nothing, if it be 



58 Ruth 

so that ye turn or re-turn toward God. Then all 
the loving angels are a-shout and the great heart 
of the Heavenly Father leaps in gladness as He 
stretches out His arms to welcome you. "At last 
I have won thee ! Now will I bless thee with 
peace and riches and joy and honor for ever and 
ever more ! ' ' 

Beloved, from Naomi to Marah is often the 
surest way back to a sweeter, richer, more blessed 
and noble Naomi ! 

One little lesson more. Ruth was taking her 
bitter early in life. Idolatrous Moab for despised 
girlhood. A summer glinting of sun-rise-love 
and joy in marriage, sudden eclipse of death and 
widowhood sweeping over her morning sorrow, in 
deep poverty and exile among a strange, proud 
and bitter people which held Moab as a dog, — 
what is all this think you for fair, gentle young 
Ruth ? But now her blessedness and fame are near 
at hand. The barley is ripe to harvest, The 
field for gleaning is just outside the city wall. 
Predestined Boaz waits unconscious ; and high 
place in Israel, and honor in the history of the 
world. Towards it all the fair Rose of Moab is 
unwittingly blooming and of it all charmingly 
deserving ! 

Some Chinamen once, in my Sunday-School in 
San Francisco, got well the philosophy of char- 
acter-building. The word ' ' adversity ' ' was used. 
Did they "understand it " ? " No." " But do 
you know what prosperity is ? ' ■ * * Yes, ' ' said one ; 
"all things good, no sick, plenty money, get rich, 



Ruth 59 

everything go well." " Right. Now, boys, ad- 
versity is exactly the other thing, all things 
going wrong. Now tell me what you think 
makes the most and the best of a man — pros- 
perity or adversity ? ' ' And they passed some 
Chinese words amongst themselves and the quick 
look of intelligence brightened their dusky faces 
and shone in their almond eyes, and one an- 
swered, ' 'Adversity first and prosperity afterwards 
will make the better man/' and the whole class 
nodded an enthusiastic assent ! So they hit the 
true law of human growth and worth, — the law 
of Providence and grace, — the law which has 
builded the true princes and royal great of earth 
and heaven. 

Through early difficulty men come to strength 
and grandeur; through sorrow into joy. "Out 
of great tribulation ' ' came they of the ' ' White 
Robes'' which the Revelator saw. Through His 
lowly life, the career of the sorrowful and despised 
and rejected, through His death of anguish and 
ignominy came our Christ to the radiancy of the 
world's Redeemer ! So came Ruth, through 
widowhood, poverty, and exile, to Israel, to Boaz, 
into ancestry of David and the line of Israel's 
kings, — into her motherhood of Him, great 
David's greater son, — the blessed Son of God. 

Let our simple lesson be, then, "Whom the 
Lord loveth He chasteneth." Let this be it, 
"Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal 
weight of glory. ' ' Well-fought difficulty, bravely- 



60 Ruth 

borne trouble, affliction lovingly endured, low- 
liness well carried, even sin well repented and 
robustly conquered, bring grandeur, honor, bliss 
in the order of the universe. So let us take the 
lowliest, most tried, most sorrow-filled hours and 
lives with a sweet and tender patience, — the long- 
est and toughest fights and hardest threshings of 
sharp tribulation with strong and unquenched 
spirit, sure for it, in Christ, of finer fiber, nobler 
strength, and clearer fitness for higher service and 
joy in this or any realm of God. 



Ruth 6 1 



CHAPTER IV 

BOAZ 
Ruth, II : 1-5 

Naomi had kinsmen in Bethlehem. Elime- 
lech, her dead husband, was of a family of note, 
and the family had yet a notable representative 
in the person of Boaz. The very name has a 
bluff, breezy, robust sound. You somehow ex- 
pect to see a cheery, hearty, generous man when 
the word passes amongst the hands in the har- 
vest fields that Boaz is coming. 

11 Kinsman! " Kindred by blood. What is in 
that tie which so binds through all the world ? In 
the old times it created and held nations. The 
nation was but the great family of the kindred 
sprung from a given stock. National amities 
were settled by consideration of remoter degrees 
of kinship. Blood relationship between reigning 
houses was for long a favorite method of diplom- 
acy for securing and cementing national alliances. 
To this day it is felt to be a peculiarly un- 
natural and even monstrous thing for races of a 
common ancestry to go to war with each other. 
The whole earth would shudder to see Great 



62 Ruth 

Britain and this Republic in bloody strife. In our 
time, if you look over the world, you see the 
races of common blood in cordial amity. That 
blended race, which we call for convenience the 
Anglo-Saxon, is in concord. The Latin races are 
much at one — while there is no cordial frame ex- 
istent between the Latin and the English-speak- 
ing family, nor between either of these and the 
Saracenic, or between the Slav and any other 
group. The last great wars of Europe were, and 
the wars of the future, if such are to be, will be 
waged along the lines of races between the very 
currents of whose blood is vital antagonism, — the 
very tides of whose essential genius are radically 
contrasted. Here in our own Republic we see the 
bitter and ugly friction of race as Mongol touches 
Saxon or Celt, or as African collides with either. 
Our labor and socialistic and anarchistic troubles 
are sharpened by these racial divergencies. The 
horror of civil war is that it is fraternal blood that 
drips from the edge of the soldier's sword. It is 
that which makes us wall out with shudder and 
prayer even the most distant thought of collision 
between the two branches of the English-speaking 
race. Their collisions of the past may God trans- 
mute into unities for all the future. Bloody 
grapple between mother and daughter, — England 
and this Republic, — the hideous catastrophe may 
heaven forevermore avert ! Let the twain forev- 
ermore be one flesh ! Whom God and Nature 
hath joined together let not man or devil put 
asunder ! May the Union Jack and the Stars and 



Ruth 63 

Stripes ever float together at the head of the ar- 
mies of progress in all lands, at the mast-heads of 
the navies and the fleets of commerce in all seas, 
and be twined with the symbols of the Cross at 
the head of the victorious columns of Christian 
civilization, which shall win universal kingdom 
for our blessed Lord — the Christ. Somehow, on 
the largest and widest scale, kinship rules, mold- 
ing features, color, stature, speech, — every habit 
of feeling, thought and life in races and through 
ages. 

But when you come to the closer relations of 
life, how sovereign is kindred ! Kinsmen are 
those made, body and soul, of the same stuff", 
cast in resembling moulds, and submitted to the 
same regimen. So effluence as of one soul is in 
every drop of kindred blood. A part of each 
soul is in every other soul of the family. Kin- 
dred ! How quick its touch on every heart ! How 
subtle its influence on all behavior ! How com- ' 
manding its power on character ! It is mighty in 
command and obedience. Along these lines of 
common blood, of kinsman's interknitting, obli- 
gations flow and duties that are sacred privilege 
as well. The race of man decrees it. Very na- 
ture makes every man his brother's keeper. 
Brother owes brother all help, succor, loyalty. 
Who will not help them of his own blood is a 
nameless monster to be abhorred. 

The good time is coming when this loyalty of 
kindred blood in the veins of every branch of the 
human race shall rise to royalty, and mankind 



v 



64 Ruth 

through the common sonship unto God shall be one 
vast and loving brotherhood. Clique and sect 
and class and color and estate shall be of no ac- 
count. Children of one Father are we all ; heirs 
of the same glory, bound for, or at rest in, the 
same heaven ; touched in all our kindred blood 
by the blood of Him, — our Redeemer and our 
elder Brother, — into sweet resemblance with each 
other and into holy likeness of Him in whose 
image we were created and whose nature we par- 
take, Bless God then for that holy mystery of 
kindred which binds together parent and child, 
brother and sister, households into oneness ; 
which, prevalent through ages, holds the millions 
in bonds of national and international peace ; 
which binds heaven and earth together till 

" One family we dwell in Him, 
One Church above, beneath, 
Though now divided by the stream — 
The narrow stream of death. 

One army of the living God, 

To His command we bow, 
Part of the host have crossed the flood, 

And part are crossing now." 

Blessed be that holy kindred, — that brotherhood 
by which we cleave to the incarnate Christ and 
so are lifted up into a Sonship to the Eternal 
Father as true as is His own ! Wonder at and 
bless the mysterious and sacred power that flows 
in the currents of kindred blood. Cherish it. 
Sanctify it. Make full of blessedness the circuits 



Ruth 65 

of personal relationship through which it pulses. 
Through it build the one kingdom, church and 
family of God in the earth. 

So Naomi coming back to Bethlehem and to 
kindred was not altogether forlorn, since not na- 
ture only, but especially the Mosaic dispensation, 
insisted on, defended, made close and sacred the 
duties and rights of kindred blood. The sole de- 
scription of Boaz given in the story is that he was 
a ''mighty man of wealth.' ' This expression, 
11 mighty man," is applied before this to Gideon 
of the terrible three hundred ; to Jeptha of the 
fair daughter and the rash vow ; warlike deliverers 
of Israel, both, from horrible and hopeless op- 
pressions. Later it is used of Saul, of David, of 
Naaman the Syrian captain, and then of the great 
champions of David's wars, — "mighty men of 
valor" all, — signalized by their feats of arms. 
Boaz, too, was a ' ' mighty man. ' ' Wars were in his 
time nigh perpetual. These plains of Bethlehem 
were fertile. They were accessible to the Philis- 
tine marauder on the west, to the Midianites of 
the east across the Jordan, to the Arabian desert- 
wanderers and pests from the south. Through 
all these years these regions were subject to wild, 
sudden and incalculable irruptions of ravaging 
enemies who came and disappeared like whirl- 
winds, leaving desolation in their track. Against 
these the men of Israel must ever be on the alert 
for defense and ready to send out their excursions 
of pursuit, recovery, retaliation or revenge, much 
like the old wars of plunder and ravage across the 



66 Ruth 

borders of Scotland and England. Scarcely 
could a man of property, courage, temper or re- 
pute have reached maturity without many a wild 
exploit of hardy defense or sudden and hot as- 
sault ; without experience of pitched battles be- 
sides these even more perilous warlike forays ; 
without the scars and reminders of the ' ' immi- 
nent and deadly breach." And Boaz is called 
11 a mighty man," elsewhere and fitly applied but 
to soldiers of name and great exploit. 

As we go on we shall find that he was a Godly 
man. That shall not make us less ready to hold 
him a soldier. Havelock and Howard and Por- 
ter and many another hero on sea and land, in 
this last, as in earlier wars, in the smoke of battle 
and the fury of the carnage, under the test of the 
camp and hospital and barrack, have borne worth- 
ily, too, the banners of their Christ, victorious 
over Satan and sin as over earthly foes. All our 
wars, from first to last, have enrolled by tens of 
thousands the very flower of our Christian chiv- 
alry, who fought even as they prayed, in the dear 
Christ's name, drawing the sword, leveling the 
rifle, shotting the artillery, manning the ship ot 
war in the name of God and of that peace which 
can come into this world through righteousness 
alone, and which must be won through blood and 
wounds and death too often in these days of 
earth's rough discipline under sin. The soldier, 
bravest, truest, most heroic, shall ever be he who 
hates carnage, abhors war, loves man, serves the 
Prince of Peace, yet for loyalty and worthy 



Ruth 67 

cause, — for native land, liberty, righteousness, 
the rights of man and the glory of God, will turn 
from the arts of peace, the joys of home, and the 
threshold of the sanctuaries of the Most High, 
to the camp, the field, and his place in the 
trenches, where shall sleep the unknown brave. 



On Fame's eternal camping ground 
Their silent tents are spread, 

And Glory guards in solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead ! " 



Boaz, as we shall see, was a man of most gra- 
cious courtesy. So all the more surely hath he 
the lofty spirit of a true soldier and leader of men. 
A knightly courtesy is as soldierly a quality as 
courage. If anywhere, in letters or in life, you 
shall find a soul of tenderness more exquisite than 
that of Boaz, I know not where it may be. But cour- 
age is always generous. The brave are always 
tender and the strong are fullest of thoughtful 
gentleness. Cowards only are cruel. Every true 
soldier and hero is by definition of him a gentle 
man — a li gentleman.' ' So let Boaz stand, as 
the phrase sets him, a soldier of many an exploit 
and many a scar, the valiant defender in arms of 
his town and people, and of the honor of Jehov- 
ah's name against the champions of Baal and 
Moloch and Ashtoreth. For all these wars were 
the holy wars of God, and the men of God in 
those days were men of war. Moses even sang, 
"Jehovah is a man of war." 



68 Ruth 

Your true soldier, too, is a man of peace. He 
well knows the horrors of victory, only a little 
less fearful than those of defeat. He best knows 
the narrow, swift chances in the awful wager of 
war. The seasoned army has no relish for the 
fierce joys of battle. Only green regiments are 
eager for the bloody wrestle. The veteran com- 
mander of a successful war, having now no laurels 
to win, no lost repute to redeem, may be confided 
in to study the peace of his country. Ten wars 
kindle from the passion and ambition of place-men 
and demagogues who never mean to smell powder 
where one is blown from the " Military Spirit " 
amongst the armies of any people. Only the in- 
expert of war will give rash voice or vote to fling 
a nation into its matchless horrors. I do not 
know among the constitutional governments of 
modern times a single instance in which the ad- 
ministration of a successful soldier has not been 
strongly in the interests of peace. 

Boaz, too, was "a mighty man of wealth." 
Emphasize thus, "a mighty MAN" — a soldier 
and a MAN — every inch a man, brave, generous, 
delicate in feeling and sentiment, courteous and 
courtly, upright, keen in honor, just and chaste — 
a man clear-cut and noble, whose blood it is well 
to have in the veins of Israel's royal house, was 
he, and rich withal. 

Riches set out well a MAN ! Show him to ad- 
vantage, give him sweep and free play, oppor- 
unity and liberty, call to him wide observation, 
ut him on high, as pedestals do statues. Now, 



Rulh 69 

rich man, there you are ! You can't be hidden ! 
Stand there and show — yourself. That is your 
doom ! If you were a poor man you could hide, 
but now you can not. It is fairly to be said that 
simple command of wealth has, and not rarely, so 
set some men into sense of power, opportunity, 
necessity, and, so, of responsibility, that their 
manhood, in its bulk and quality, has been 
rapidly, visibly, gloriously increased. Their riches 
have opened to them a new world. Their nobler 
faculties have been aroused to enter it after worthy 
and even princely fashion. Parvenues have some- 
times out-shone, not in glitter, but in true dignity, 
wisdom and modest worth, the old nobilities. 
Even oftener riches simply bring out from ob- 
scurity the souls which were all-worthy and 
adorned with sweet grace before, — the new wealth 
only setting the man and womanhood a-play on 
wider and more conspicuous fields, with better 
facilities and ampler and sweeter chance. How 
wealth girds around with power the good, the 
noble, and the loving, the generous and the 
gentle? The wealth of Helen Gould did not 
make her great, but it gave her opportunity for 
great beneficence which has made her name be- 
loved to hosts of her country's defenders, and 
given it to fame for the ages. How riches sur- 
round with beauty the cultured and refined and 
put into eager hands the blessedness of the giver 
and the doer, for the poor, the beloved, the 
wronged, the grand cause, and so builds all that 
is noble in the truly noble ! The real man, rich — 



70 Ruth 

what power is his ! He fosters enterprise, creates 
and rewards industry, controls for the general 
weal great interests in every sort, is commander 
of troops of men, stands a center of a thousand 
circuits of life — source of a thousand streams of 
beneficent social influence and power. He con- 
trols opinion in manifold ways. He gives cur- 
rency to honesty, honor, justice and fair-dealing; 
to purity, chastity, and virtue in private and 
domestic relations; to public spirit, patriotism 
and devotion in public affairs ; to ardent personal 
zeal in religion. He swells mightily the volume 
of the world's gifts to every cause of humanity 
and righteousness and God the whole world over. 

Thank God for every wise, good Christian 
11 mighty man of wealth I n A rich good man ? 
Such there are in goodly groups. And they re- 
fute the blasphemy that to win success in this 
world a man must knuckle to evil, dodge recti- 
tude, conform to dishonest ways in business and 
be a scoundrel, serving the Devil. It is not true. 
In this world, as in any over which God reigns, 
honesty is the best policy. Intelligence, virtue, 
and integrity are likeliest to win, and to hold 
what they have won. Vast estates gotten together 
by fraud, oppression and gambling, by profane, 
unclean and wicked men, are apt to go to pieces 
swiftly and the men themselves to come to sudden 
and awful end ! You have seen many such for- 
tunes and such men so dispersed and ended. If 
you live twenty-five years longer to see the better 
laws of business come in you will see multitudes 



Ruth 71 

SUCh ill-gotten fortunes vanish and their ; 

tors fall, like L/tw whom 

might name, from the firmament of the finatU ial 

of a mighty manhood, poised 

And ed by his own weight of metal and 

rong, just, generou*, pure, gen 

beneficent and Christian, let him he r\< h ! if is 

hand is on the '. fbrman'i good 

and /.lory. Hefendfl the race spinning up 

the grades to the better future, if is loot is \<-t on 
the neck of a thousand writhing, dying, dead lies 
and shames and < and, lofty and I 

trous is the figure of this true " mighty man of 
wealth." 

mean man of wealth, stingy amid his 
millions, pinching his sixpence yet; the weak 
man of wealth ; the unscrupulous man of wealth, 
devouring his fellows, and winning their deserved 
hatred ; the fraudulent one, a coward, —k- 

ing new crimes which the law can not reach ; the 
rich liar, gambler, thief; the rich sot, blasphei:, 
whorem debauchee, high for clear rev 

tion to mankind, that their contempt may riddle 
him and that his fall ma 

of integrity and virtue, high that the exemplary 
vengeance ( may first strike him for all 

men's warning and instruction i thamc and 
offense of him is set out by his riches that r 
may d abhor him and avoid his like. 'i 

awful doom. Aye, ric: mighty in the 

hands of the wicked, to rot and damn the holder, 
to corrupt busi:. debauch and uptur 



72 Ruth 

ety, to make pleasure sin and put integrity at a 
discount, to make honesty difficult and rare, to 
make purity a laughing stock and chastity a bye- 
word and religion a hissing. It is an inexpress- 
ible calamity when the rich man or men of a town 
or a section are unscrupulous, lacking in integ- 
rity, immoral and irreligious. Disaster is not far 
off to every social, moral, pecuniary and religious 
concern of that region. Stand from under, or 
gird yourself with a divine integrity, for earth- 
quake and whirlwinds are at hand. 

Boaz was a mighty man, a man of strong, 
brave, true, chaste manhood, clothed now with 
the further grace and power of wealth, with which 
Jehovah had seen it safe to entrust him. A wise 
old friend of mine once said to one who with an 
impatient shrug of her shoulders was saying, " If 
I but had the money this thing should go.'' 
4 'Yes, madam; but He doesn't seem to have 
trusted you !" Many men are not rich because 
God loves them and knows that riches would be 
their ruin ; and more, perhaps, because he loves 
others and means that they shall not be able to 
ruin them. A cobbler in Connecticut, poor, so- 
ber, honest, fell sudden heir to $20,000. He left 
his bench and simple house and ways of honest 
and laborious poverty, lived idle and high, drank at 
first well and then hard, ran through it all, a sot ; 
went back, sobered, to his last and bench, re- 
sumed his industry, his quiet life, and was happy 
again. Not long after another calamity of heir- 
ship fell down on him and set him all aghast. 



Ruth 73 

He ran to his wife with the bitter cry, " O my 
God, have we got all that to go through with 
again ? " At her wise advice he put the legal 
control of the legacy into other and wiser hands, 
and so averted his terrors. The greater part of 
the human race lives this month by last month's 
earning. Something like that is, probably, best 
safeguard of its average happiness. 

Naomi and Ruth are now living in poverty. 
In their sore need there appears but one resource. 
They are too proud, doubtless, to ask succor at the 
hands of their kindred. But the poorest of the 
poor may glean the orchards and the fields after 
the harvester. Who gathers the fig or olive, or 
the fruit of any tree, must not beat the branches 
clean. The poor must find gleaning when he 
comes. The reaper must not gather the stray, 
falling heads or handfuls of grain nor reap clean 
the corners of the field. The poor coming after 
must find his meed from every harvest hand. 
And now the barley has come to harvest. The 
broad fields around Bethlehem stretch afar on 
every side, yellow 7 with the golden grain bend- 
ing to the sickle, and the wheat is turning from 
green to gold. From sickle in the barley to 
threshing of the wheat, four month's time, the 
poorest may at least live by the gleanings. No 
inviting task is this of the gleaner, all da} 7 long, 
sweltering under the glaring sun, stooping in the 
stubble, gathering here a straw and there a head, 
and coming to the field for that only by the right 
of confessed poverty and helplessness. No very 



74 Ruth 

safe task is this, either, for fair young woman- 
hood, following all day rough, rude groups of 
laborers, — a poor, defenceless, fair daughter of 
Moab, — or in the hands of some rich and reckless 
owner of the field who can make her gleaning 
rich or naught. 

But Ruth, strong in her love, ready to any 
sacrifice or labor for Naomi's sake, girded by the 
purity of her thought, safe-guarded by her sor- 
rows, her sacred memories and the wings of Jeho- 
vah, under which she had come to trust, pleads 
with Naomi that she may go, a gleaner, to find 
the poor food of their daily need and grim neces- 
sity. Naomi had no choice but to send her, and 
said, " Go, my daughter/' with a sharp pang at 
her heart that she has brought her to this. So, 
in the garb of poverty, on the errand of the 
hungry, stands beautiful Ruth outside the 
gate of Bethlehem. The uneven fields beneath 
and before her are all waving with the golden 
harvests as the gentle breezes play across 
them. Here and there are busy groups of har- 
vesters, bowing to their work, chatting, shouting 
jests, singing snatches of harvest song. I^ittle 
choice to her as to which of them she shall join. 
1 ' Her hap was to light on a part of the field be- 
longing to Boaz. ' ' There are no fences separating 
fields there. Stones set in the corners of each 
man's possessions indicate them. An old Divine 
curse is on him who removes those ancient land- 
marks. The very stones which marked the field 
where Ruth gleaned may still cause the horse of 



Ruth 75 

the traveler to stumble over the places where they 
were set at the Jewish return from Egypt. There 
are no houses in those fields. Owners and labor- 
ers alike have their homes and take their sleep 
inside the walls of the town, now as then. "Her 
hap was to light 011 the part of the field belonging 
to Boaz." A happy hap was that ! 

How full of chance this world is! "But for 
such and such a chance," said one to me, "I 
should have been with my family on that great 
steamer when she went down." But for that ill- 
fortune I should have been rich. By that merest 
chance I met her who is now my wife. I hap- 
pened to stumble on such an experience or chance 
and it set me into this business or led me to the 
ministry or set me down on this coast or that. 
I happen to be of such a make-up, and that set- 
tles it that I must be and do thus and thus. It 
chanced to blow one day and Israel crossed the 
Red Sea dry-shod, and it happened to blow again 
and the Egyptians were drowned in the refluent 
waves. While Titus was besieging Jerusalem 
there chanced a strange panic in the steady, iron 
cohorts of Rome, and they fled, raising for the 
moment the siege, and all Jerusalem was exultant 
as at escape. But all Christians remembered the 
warning of the Master, and fled the doomed capi- 
tal to the provinces, the mountains or caves, and 
were safe. Then the Roman Legions came back, 
iron as of old, to their work, and slew eleven- 
hundred thousand children, women and men, by 
hunger, fire, sword and cross, in awful sack. 



76 Ruth 

Great is Chance ! Luck is God ! L,et the lot be 
cast into the lap ! That is all in this world, but 
it was a happy chance that sent the gleaner Ruth 
into Boaz's field. Nay, nay ! It was a Hand unseen 
of her that guided thither her sandalled and unwit- 
ting feet. It was a wisdom undreamed of her 
which chose the field of her gleaning. It was a 
Heart of whose infinite love she had yet little 
knowledge which sent her amongst the stooks of 
Boaz's grain. And she craved of the head reaper 
the privilege of the gleaner, told him her name, 
hid her beauty under the Eastern woman's veil, 
beneath the garb at once of poverty and sorrow, 
disguised her Moabitish accent under the veil of 
silence, and bent her, with many memories and 
pains at her gentle heart, to her patient, uncom- 
plaining toil for the ' ' bread of the poor. ' ' 

So it all had " chanced.' ' A famine had 
chanced in the years agone. It had ' ' happened ' ' 
that Elimelech alone of Bethlehem chose to retire 
to Moab. There he " chanced " to die. Mahlon 
and Chilion ' * happened ' ' to meet and marry 
Orpah and Ruth. Then they " happened " to 
die, and Naomi " chanced " to hear of plenty in 
Israel. It " happened " that Ruth returned with 
her, and now, as a gleaner, has the " good luck' ' 
to come to the field of Boaz, a kinsman, a man of 
noble nature and of wealth, — has "by chance" 
come to glean the whole riches of many a splendid 
harvest. Friends, have done ! There is no 
" chance." There is, for every soul and body, a 
wonderful personal care of God in its creation and 



Ruth 77 

enduement, an infinite painstaking and watchful- 
ness of God in every instrument for its develop- 
ment, livery experience is exactly fitted to the 
soul and chosen to build it to its pattern and send 
it to its goal fixed by the divine love along the 
path laid down in the charts of eternity ! All 
that comes to thee or another was made for thee 
or the other, could not have been interchanged, 
and that for each is the gift of wisest, strongest, 
divinest love. The "hap" of Ruth to light on 
the point of the field that belonged to Boaz was but 
the hap that God should be God and that hers 
should be a soul submissive to His hand. For 
every life of man is laid a distinct and most gra- 
cious plan, into which plays no stroke of fortune 
or element of chance. Yet into that plan is 
wrought the element of his free will. By simple, 
affectionate loyalty to God in the man every step 
shall be success, every experience joy, every gift 
glory, (very moment blessing, and life shall cul- 
minate in a song and death become a coronation. 
By such simple loyalty your life shall move on 
serene as the peace of God, resistless as the sweep 
of the worlds, holy and blessed now and forever. 
But you have a fell power, not to confuse the uni- 
verse and baffle God, but to wreck your all, to 
reverse every designed blessing to yourself, to 
make every gift of love a curse, life itself ^n 
empty thing, and death a deep damnation. Even 
then there is no chance about it. The end is sure 
as fate. To play lovingly into the will of God 
is to be in the rush of the current of almightiness. 



78 Ruth 

To tug or stand against it is to fling yourself 
across the track of trains of rolling worlds, of 
Providence moved by Omnipotence. That is 
madness ! That is doom ! 

Led thus far by no " hap " at all, but by the 
hand of Jehovah, Ruth is bowed in hard necessity 
and grievous sorrow, to her gleaning after the 
reapers in the predestined barley-field of the fore- 
ordained Boaz, though she knew it not. And she 
hears as she stoops a bluff", hearty voice calling to 
the reapers, "The Lord be with you!" and in 
chorus the reapers answer, ' ' The Lord bless thee ! ' ' 
As she half raises herself and her timid eyes, and 
glances from beneath her veil, she hears him ask, 
turning towards her, ' ' And whose damsel is this ? ' ' 
And the Rose of Moab stands there meekly in the 
sunlight by the barley sheaves, looking shyly 
into his face, under the kindly eyes of the 
noble ancestor of a kingly race, and the group 
of harvesters stand looking on. 'Tis a picture 
to make the artists mad ! The waving, golden 
grain, the sheaves in the stubble, the reapers, 
sickle in hand, looking on, the sunlight over 
all, predestined Ruth and foreordained Boaz face 
to face with each other and the Divine Decree ! 



Ruth 79 



CHAPTER V 

THE GIvBANKR A-FIKUX 

Jehovah recompense thy work, my daughter, and a full 
reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel under whose 
wings thou art come to trust. — Boaz. 

A right pleasant thing it is to listen back to 
the good old time when Boaz, the ' ' mighty man ' ' 
of valor and of " wealth," came to his fields and 
his working men in the morning with goodwill 
and a hearty "The Lord be with you ! " for them 
and got ringing response from them, "Jehovah 
bless thee !" A delightful thing to look back 
and see this capitalist talking familiarly with his 
field hands, sitting down with them at their noon- 
day luncheon and showing a kindly concern even 
for the gleaners who followed the reapers to gather 
up for poverty the heads of grain which might 
fall from their hands. Careful for those in his em- 
ploy, he is asking the head reaper about yonder 
woman whom he sees gleaning. " She," the fore- 
man says, "she is the damsel from Moab, who 
came back with Naomi in her affliction. She has 



80 Ruth 

asked the privilege of a gleaner and has been busy 
at her task all the morning, except that she rested 
a little in the booth there as if she were weary of 
unaccustomed labor." So Boaz and Ruth came 
face to face among the barley sheaves and the 
reapers as w r e saw and left them standing in our 
last chapter. 

Nor yet were they quite face to face, for Ruth, 
hearing well enough, had kept at her gleaning as 
if she heard naught. Boaz, seeing her modest 
ruse, says to her, " Hearest thou not, my daugh- 
ter ? Go not to glean in another field, abide here 
fast by my maidens." For women, young and 
old, were employed in the Eastern harvest fields 
then as now. It was a great kindly heart that 
spoke her then, addressing her by a title of 
fatherly gentleness which he meant should be 
pledge of safety and help for her and put her at 
ease in his presence and in that of the strangers 
around her. And then he tells her to keep a 
sharp look-out for the handfuls of grain, to keep 
close to the reapers that others might not gather 
before her, as if he saw that her modest diffi- 
dence would not let her get a fair chance. As he 
catches her apprehensive glances at the rough 
men about her, he assures her that she shall meet 
no rudeness at tongue or hand of his men and bids 
her go for her thirst to the pitchers which the 
men have filled. It is all done so gently, frankly, 
generously, that it is quite too much for poor 
Ruth. She bowed herself even to the ground in 
surprise and gladness, in Oriental fashion, and he 



Ruth 8 1 

hears for the first time the voice which for many 
a blessed year henceforth shall be music in his 
ears, a song in his heart and a gladness in his 
house. It spake him now in right modest and 
graceful sort, doubtless in quaint Hebrew, with 
a Moabitish accent in it, which did not do any 
hurt — none the less winsome for that ! And the 
voice said, "Why have I found such grace in 
thine eyes, that thou shouldst take thought for 
me, a stranger?" that is, a Gentile, an alien, 
despised of the Jew. She knew not how widely 
the report of her devotion to Naomi and the dead 
had already reached. He tells her that he has 
heard it all. It had been fully shewed him how 
she had left her father and her mother, her native 
land and her gods, and for her love and loyalty, 
had come to a strange land and people. " Jehovah 
recompense thy work, my daughter, and a full 
reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel 
under whose wings thou art come to trust." Was 
ever courtlier, handsomer, more fitting or more 
Godly speech made to any woman by any man 
than this of Boaz to the poor and lonely gleaner 
from Moab, bowed there at his feet in his field ? 
Her behavior had won his profound respect. Her 
worthy womanhood commanded his courtesy. Her 
poverty, strangerhood and lowly gleaner's work 
did not make him think a gracious courtliness 
unmeet or needless. In very truth, such cour- 
tesy, careful, principled, everywhere, towards all 
people, at all times, is rooted in gentle and gener- 
ous character and good blood. It is morality and 



82 Ruth 

inseparable from true nobility. Discourtesy any- 
where, in any presence, to anybody, is breach of 
morals and default from integrity. If a man must 
vent a rudeness on any one let it be on his equal 
in station and not on his social inferior or his de- 
pendent. The former case may demand courage — 
the latter is cowardice. Character, quite as much 
as blood and breeding, tells for a true politeness. 
Rudeness is possible but to souls ill-made, of bad 
stuff. Courtesy is gentle and kindly feeling and 
purpose, fitly expressed. Civility is, therefore, 
proof of you, not of him whom you address, — 
indicates and ranks you, not the grade of the 
other. Your own quality makes it necessary to 
you, not any consideration of the quality of the 
other. Your own gracious bearing, not that of 
another towards you, marks you as true noble- 
man, or woman of highest rank. To be seeming 
gentleman with gentlemen, and then blackguard 
with blackguard, and boor with boor, shall show 
that you, of yourself, are nothing and nobody. 
To servants, the true man and womanhood are in 
kindly and gentle manners, not as policy, but as 
of common and inalienable human right, — as of 
the necessity, as well, of a well-born soul. To the 
workman in shop or store or mill or on the street, if 
yourself be true man or gentleman, the Apostle's 
old-time injunction, "Be courteous/' will meet 
absolute obedience. In the home, the law which 
makes most for love, peace, and blessing is that of 
gentleness, kindliness and consideration, that is, 
of courtesy, habitually maintained. That is as 



Ruth 83 

gracious a thing by the fireside, in the little inner- 
most group of the beloved, as in the drawing- 
room with the more, who are less dependent upon 
your behaviors. Why not ? 

To the stranger, courtesy ! though he be of 
other race and hue. It was a handsome rebuke, 
that of the Celestial. Crossing daintily, in ex- 
quisite attire, a muddy street in San Francisco, on 
a narrow plank, a rough met him and flung him 
headlong into the mid-street filth. The China- 
man gathered himself up, reached the sidewalk, 
turned, lifted his little cap from his head, bowed 
to the ruffian and said, "You Christian. Me 
Heathen. Good-bye !" and went his way, silken 
clothes begrimed, but in vastly better plight 
than his brutal assailant, — of better blood and 
breeding by far. The boy who touched his cap 
to a beggar was laughed at by his companion, who 
said, "That is not a gentleman ! " The lad re- 
plied, "But I am one"; which showed the 
quality of the boy, — the contrasted qualities of 
the two boys ! 

Now I want you to note a thing further about 
the courtesy of Boaz. There is not a particle of 
condescending and offensive patronage in the 
manner of it. He is no Pecksniff. He does Ruth 
homage for her worth and well-doing without any 
self-conscious stooping from his lofty place to 
reach down to her. The courtesy which makes 
a to-do about itself, which stoops to the lowly, 
the sinning, the distressed, after such sort as to 
make all its whalebones crack and all its silks 



84 Ruth 

rustle and all its jewels glitter, — so as to make 
the impression of tremendous descent from some 
awful height of grandeur, — is insult and outrage. 
Yet it is so ludicrous that it may be mercy, mak- 
ing the veriest misery fain to clap its hands to its 
shaking sides to keep from exploding with 
laughter. O my condescending, patronizing 
friend, you are of just such common clay as all 
the rest of us. You have just as good a right to 
stand by the cot of the beggar or the cell of the 
outcast, without putting on airs, as anybody else 
has. It is no more a wonderful grace in you 
either. It is part of your human business ; and 
if you can not do it without parade and silly, 
lofty airs, why, then, you have got yet to learn 
common sense and good breeding, to say nothing 
of grace and love and piety and humanity. 

Why, down in the lanes, in lowliness and pov- 
erty, lie, — sick and distressed, — predestined no- 
bles, princes, aristocracy of the Heavenly realms, 
who shall ride the golden streets beyond the stars 
in the chariots of God ! Beside them, to-morrow, 
in their shining robes and bejeweled crowns, in 
their high places close to the Christ, we, who 
condescend to them now, shall seem but dim and 
lowly figures, least of saints, if not even cast out 
from the holy. There be saints sooty and be- 
grimed, to whom men speak down as from far 
heights, with sense of great elevation, giving them 
to touch but the finger-tip of a limp and haughty 
hand, at whose feet you and I might do well to 
sit in meekness, learning wisdom, grace and noble- 



Ruth 85 

ness, — getting the high secret of likeness to Christ 
and eternal splendors in character. 

We used to read in children's books of Fairy 
Tales how boors and tawdry creatures lorded it 
over princes under charmed spells, or in disguise, 
only to fall into terrible shame and hurt when the 
princes or princesses came to themselves and their 
own again. Such transfigurations are yet to be, 
outside these revels of childhood's fancy. The 
first are to be last and the last first in the societies 
and kingdoms of the universe, — in the grand re- 
ception halls and the shining and eternal court of 
God! 

A frank and cordial courtesy to all the human, 
which means well-wishing and kindly doing, is 
the only way of a decent righteousness. Boaz's 
bearing towards his men and to Ruth is an exqui- 
site model. He has spoken in a single sentence 
of what he has heard of her more than filial be- 
havior, of her widowhood, of her father and 
mother, of her dead, of her native land, of her 
loneliness amongst a strange people, deftly 
suggesting at the same time that this sense 
of strangerhood will pass away, and all with- 
out a flatterer's word, or a single syllable that 
could give her uneasiness or pain. Then he adds, 
as if he thought, though not exactly saying it, 
that her bearing had been past praise or human 
power to reward, "Jehovah recompense thee ! A 
full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel 
under whose wings thou art come to trust." 

Those wings ! Ah, they are wide of reach to 



86 Ruth 

cover thee and thine everywhere ! They are swift 
to come to thee, or to fly away to thine, for succor 
in any need, temptation, peril. They are strong 
to beat back any danger in defense of thee. They 
are close to cover thee in any storm, — warm and 
soft to brood thee and comfort thee. Under them 
thou canst hide and feel the great heart-throb of 
His love quickening every pulse of thine own ! 
Under those wings Ruth had come to trust. 

The kindly words of Boaz, the exquisite delicacy 
and tenderness of his speech make her cry out with 
a kind of restful triumph, " I indeed find favor in 
thy sight, my lord. Thou hast comforted me, 
Thou hast spoken to the heart unto thine hand- 
maiden, though I be so unlike the maidens of thy 
people.' ' Her little speech, so graceful, so full of 
frank gratitude and natural joyfulness and modest 
self-depreciation evidently " spoke to the heart M 
unto Boaz ! And there was no occasion for fur- 
ther speech just then. So he turned to his fields 
and she to her gleaning. 

By and by it was time for the mid-day rest and 
luncheon. As it was spread beneath the booth of 
boughs, — the " house " spoken of in verse seven, 
where Ruth had "rested a little' ' from her un- 
wonted task, — Boaz and his workmen gather in 
the grateful shade to their merry refreshment. 
Presently he sees Ruth sitting yonder in the 
shadow of a stook of sheaves and calls her to come 
and take of their food and water and wine. She 
came at his kindly call and was seated near him 
in the shade and shared the repast. As they ate, 



Ruth 87 

Boaz took of the parched corn and gave it her 
with his own hand. This delicacy was the not 
fully ripe heads of wheat. You take a handful 
of the grain upon the stalk, hold it over a blaze 
of dry stubble or grass or twigs till the chaff is 
crisped and the kernels crackle, and then rub 
in your hands the heads. This gives you the 
4 ( parched corn ' ' with which the farmer regaled 
the gleaner that noon-day. Our version has it 
that "she ate, was satisfied and left." There 
could not well have been a more awkward blun- 
der in rendering the passage into English. He 
gave her of food and this parched corn in so hos- 
pitable abundance that she had ample supply 
"left" that she should take away with her at 
evening, for herself and Naomi. This explains 
the 1 8th verse further on. That verse as you 
would carelessly read it gives an offensive picture 
of Naomi giving tired and waiting Ruth what was 
" left " after she had eaten alone what she would ! 
But that verse simply tells us that Ruth at the 
close of her hard day's work took home her glean- 
ing, laid it at her mother's feet and then drew forth 
from some bi£ pocket of her mantle that abun- 
dant supply which the bountiful noon-day meal 
had "left" her, and they sat down together to 
eat it and to talk over all the new experiences of 
this which might well have been a trying day. 
A picture very different from that other which 
you may have gotten from a careless reading. 

When Ruth had risen and gone to her work 
Boaz took opportunity to charge his men to give 



88 Ruth 

her chance for rich gleanings among the very- 
sheaves, even to let fall handfuls on purpose for 
her, and, very straitfy, to touch her not with any 
jibe or disrespect, nor put her to any shame. 
Then he went his way and she wrought on pa- 
tiently till eventide. 

Why did not this rich man, at once, having 
taken so kindly an interest in her, relieve her of 
this drudgery, — provide for her and her mother 
outright and put them at their ease? Well, the 
poor may be proud and self-respecting as well as 
poor. Gleaning is no beggary nor even depend- 
ence, but her right. He may well enough have 
seen that Ruth would not receive such favors from 
a stranger. There may have been tongues so 
quick to wag at instigation of unclean minds 
that he knew it would be better for Ruth's good 
name and for his, that she should glean on than 
that she should take, or he offer, large gifts. 
May be that he, the wise man, wanted to have 
her under his eye a little that he might know her 
more perfectly. Possibly, for dawning of deepest 
reason man can know, he liked to have the orna- 
ment of her beauty, grace and modest woman- 
hood in his fields with assurance of meeting her 
there from day to day. At any rate he left her 
to glean on till evening. Then she sat down and 
beat out upon her veil with sticks the grain from 
her heap of barley, and tossing it in the air with 
her hands, like a child at play, let the wind blow 
away the chaff. O, it was a pretty sight, there 
on the heights of Bethlehem, at the sunset, its 



Ruth 89 

ruddy glow upon her ! I think the reapers, and 
maybe Boaz with them, looked on from their 
respectful distance, and thought so, too, as she 
sat there tossing the golden handfuls up into the 
air and light, and watching the chaff blow 
away like delicate puffs of tinted smoke, little 
thinking that she sat there a charming picture for 
the gazers then, — and here and now, more than 
three thousand years and half the circumference 
of the globe away ! So come ever from the un- 
conscious attitudes of grace the glorious pictures 
which men will not suffer to die ! Then she tied 
up the corners of the square cloth that formed her 
veil, with about a bushel of clean grain in it, — 
a wonderful day's work for an unaccustomed 
gleaner, — lifted it upon her head and walked 
away, erect and stately, to the city and her lowly 
home and laid, it may be, her first earnings at her 
mother's feet. Then she brought out the ' 4 parched 
corn ' ' and abundant food ' ! left ' ' from the dinner 
in the field and they sat together at an unwonted 
feast, — Ruth tired enough, indeed, but happy, I 
think ; and Naomi full of motherly anxiety and 
womanly curiosity and questions about the inci- 
dents of the day — where she had been to find so 
free a gleaning, and of eager interest as the day's 
story runs. Ruth told it with what of descriptive 
art, or gay humor or pathos or gratitude or praise, 
I know not — told of the reapers, of her work, of 
the other women, of the owner and his words to 
her and to the men. And Naomi would here and 
there interrupt with question or exclamation of 



go Ruth 

surprise or pleasure or invocation of blessings 
upon the head of the great farmer who had been 
so kindly and generous. Then she bethought 
her and said, "And his name? Who is he?" 44 His 
name ? It is Boaz. ' ' Naomi recognizes her kins- 
man, begins to see the hand of Jehovah in this 
day's leading, the kindness of the Lor^d to the 
living, nay, to the very dead ! With a cry of grate- 
ful thanks to God for His goodness, an ascription 
not very common with her in those grief-filled 
days, I fear, she says to the wondering Ruth, 
with an emphasis she could not well understand, 
* ' This man is near of kin unto us. ' ' Then, ' ' He is 
next kinsman ! ' ' This ' 4 kindness to the dead " — 
this ' ' right to redeem ! • ' You see the instant leap 
of her thought to the possibilities of the future, to 
the natural course of things, of which her daugh- 
ter evidently knows nothing. But, catching her 
mother's gladness, she adds gratefully, "And he 
bade me keep fast to his maidens and harvesters 
till the harvest is ended." And Naomi enjoined 
her to heed the farmer's will and be found in no 
other field. That was a rare evening hour of hap- 
piness in their sorrowful lives, as they sat together 
eating the first fruits of this first day's gleaner- 
work and talking of its unexpected and happy 
incidents. 

So for many weeks the gleaning went on, Ruth 
remembering, sorrowing, laboring in lowly, pa- 
tient sort, but glad in the favor of the rich land- 
lord and in the honest maintenance she was 
winning for her mother and herself. Naomi, 



Ruth 91 

waiting on Providence and planning a little by 
way of making the meaning of Providence quite 
clear and the way smooth, as perhaps some others 
have done, and as will soon appear. Providence 
does not commonly propose to empty good things 
ready made into people's laps. Things never 
"turn up" for the Messrs. Micawber! Foresight, 
enterprise, thrift, wise setting of means to desired 
ends, shrewdness even, — these are the ordinary 
modes on the human side toward Providential 
results. 

Whether our American fashion of making mar- 
riage more nearly a matter of mere chance and 
juxtaposition than any other thing under heaven 
is left to be is the final and absolute wisdom is not 
yet demonstrated. Possibly the vast number of 
divorces, revealing a length, breadth and depth 
of domestic wretchedness may give a not satisfac- 
tory witness. Anyhow, Naomi, shrewd and pos- 
itive woman as she was, did not propose to leave 
that matter to chance, and her work was not 
altogether failure ! 

Ruth, after their supper and long, cheery talk, 
sleeps the sound sleep of health and innocence 
and youth and weariness from unwonted labor, 
while Naomi looks on her and murmurs, right 
lovingly, "My Rose, my sweet Rose of Moab ! " 
and then falls dreaming, — whether asleep or wak- 
ing, — falls dreaming fond, proud mother-dreams 
of Mahlon and Chilion — her boys ; of the past 
in Moab and of what may yet come of this day's 
gleaning in the field of Boaz ; of God's leading, of 



92 Ruth 

Israel's law, next of kin, of her daughter's beauty 
and nobleness and of her own good mother-wit. 
So we will leave them, — Ruth in her innocent 
unconsciousness and Naomi in this mingling of 
piety, maternal love, and worldly wisdom. 



Ruth 93 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WINNOWING AND THE WEDDING. 

And now the harvest is reaped, the gleaning 
ended, the gleaner's work all done. The oppor- 
tunity of the poor is past. The stooks of barley 
and wheat that dotted far and near the yellow 
stubble of the reaped fields have consolidated 
themselves into great groups of stacks here and 
there on the highest places of each farmer's 
ground. Beside each group of stacks they have 
cleared, smoothed and rolled hard a circular space, 
have sprinkled and covered it well, — if careful 
farmers meaning to get the highest market prices 
for their grain or best repute for their wives for 
whitest bread, — -with pulverized chalk from the 
cliffs which wall in the valley of the Jordan, and 
have rolled it all hard again with heavy rollers, 
making a smooth, clean, white surface of, may 
be, fifty feet in diameter. As soon as the dew is 
fairly gone in the morning the laborers are 
at their work tossing down the bundles from 
the stacks, cutting the bands, spreading the 
grain over the fair white threshing floor. The 
threshers are oiled, in gear and ready for their 
work, for they are boys and girls waiting 



94 Ruth 

their finest harvest sport. Here a broad, flat 
plank, curved upward at the front like what we 
used to call a " stone-boat " in my boyhood, with 
bits of stone fastened to the botton underneath to 
tear and crush the straw. A group of children, 
riding, goad the oxen round and round over the 
grain till it is threshed and torn to chaff. There 
a group of boys, grotesquely mounted on donkey, 
ass or ox, ride their trampling steeds around this 
way and that, and so, cantering, laughing, shout- 
ing, colliding, tumbling, with no end of fun and 
laughter and jest, they thresh out the golden 
harvests. Or yonder is the more elaborate 
thresher, — a frame like the two runners of a sled. 
Its cross bars are axles for wooden rollers set a 
few inches apart, armed with toothed plates of 
iron, like dulled circular saws, to cut and tear the 
straw in pieces and free the grain. A seat is 
rigged upon the frame for the driver, whose 
weight adds to the efficiency of his machine. 
Isaiah refers to this ' ' improved thresher ' ' in the 
forty-first chapter of his prophecies, " I will make 
thee a new, sharp threshing instrument having 
teeth. Thou shalt thresh the mountains [thine 
enemies] and beat them small, and shalt make 
the hills as chaff. The winds shall carry them 
away and the whirwind shall scatter them. ' ' How 
vivid the figure ! Israel to his enemies as this 
thresher to the mountains and hills of heaped 
grain, crushing them to chaff to be blown away ! 
So great flooring after flooring, all day long, is 
trampled, torn, threshed, the straw raked aside, 



Ruth 95 

the grain shovelled up into a heap in the center 
of the floor. Towards sunset in those regions, in 
the harvest season, the breezes rise. The tired 
cattle are unyoked for their rest and the work- 
men with their wooden shovels attack the heap of 
grain and chaff in the middle of the floor, tossing 
it high in air. The wind blows the chaff out from 
the grain, leaving at the sturdy winnower's feet 
an ever diminishing heap of ever purer and cleaner 
gold of the harvest, while off to the leeward floats 
a fine, graceful, fleecy and growing windrow of 
mere chaff. So the merry work goes on till the 
day's threshing is cleaned up and heaped together 
and the chaff to lee of the floor is made an even- 
ing's bonfire for light of their harvest festivities. 

When the owner and the workmen have made 
their merry supper, had their story, their jests, 
their rustic game and harvester's wine, they lay 
themselves down under the starry, cloudless sky, 
amid the balmy airs of the harvest time, beside 
the stacks of grain or the heap of clean, winnowed 
and deliciously fragrant wheat, on beds of sweet, 
well-threshed straw, to their well-earned and per- 
fect repose. 

There is no sleep like that of health and honest 
weariness on the bosom of the kindly mother- 
earth, under the stars. I have often passed along 
the lines of an army bivouacked in the open air 
after a good day's march — here the lines of stacked 
guns and there of sleeping men — scarce the guns 
in slumbers more profound than that of the men 
beside them. Let army trains thunder by, with 



96 Ruth 

all shoutings and confusion ; let showers gather 
and fall — the seasoned army sleeps on. Nothing 
but the long roll or the reveille shall waken it. 
That sleep many of you have known, a genera- 
tion ago and in these months past — that sleep 
and the glorious refreshment of it when the waking 
and the morning comes. The like of it in times of 
peace great numbers of us, men, women and child- 
ren, used to seek during the opportunities of a Cali- 
fornia's summer rest amongst the hills and in the 
forests primeval, by fair lakes and rushing streams, 
in deep Yosemites and along the shores of the 
resounding sea. Such was the sleep of the har- 
vesters by the threshing floors that encircled 
Bethlehem on every side with their fires and 
stacks of grain, like the tents and watchfires of a 
besieging host. 

The harvest, in spite of all its hard work, is 
evermore a time of gratefulness and gladness. I 
remember the "huskings" of dear old New Eng- 
land, the long, lighted floor, the fragrant ' ' mows ' ' 
of hay flanking it, the forest of stooks all along 
in front of the empty stalls for the cattle, the heaps 
of yellow corn, the lamps, candles and lanterns 
lighting them, and the merry company of men, 
women and children, of the young and the old, 
who laughed and sang, chatted and told stories, 
made merry jests and began intimacies which hold 
yet for blessedness to many a heart and home. 
Harvest-home-festivities, in all lands and times, 
are the natural voice of the gladness of man as he 
gathers to garner the fruits of his toil and of God's 



Ruth 97 

bounty. They were joyful religious feasts in the 
earliest times of Israel ; and they now take on the 
religious gladness of a nation's Thanksgiving Day. 
So one loves all the more to linger over these sweet 
pictures of the harvesters about the threshing- 
floors of Bethlehem — men, women and children — 
under the stars, in the simple old times of which 
we speak. 

A thing, now, has been revolving itself for 
months in Naomi's mind. It is law in Israel that 
man shall increase and multiply in the earth. 
Chief part of any man's blessing is this, "Thy 
seed shall be as the stars for multitude and as the 
sands upon the sea-shore ! ' ' Heaviest of curses 
is this, "Thy name shall be cut off from the 
earth." Children, sons to bear the name, carry 
down the blood, stand in the lot and take the in- 
heritance of the father is to the Jew an almost 
supreme consideration. To be childless is counted 
a curse from Jehovah. That families may not go 
extinct through alienation of inheritance, all the 
enslaved of Israel go free and all alienated estates 
return at the Jubilee. So deeply rooted and 
divinely fostered in Israel of old was this passion 
of posterity that, if a man marry and die childless, 
his brother shall take the widow as his wife and 
their children shall bear the name and take the 
inheritance of the dead brother. To refuse that 
is dishonor. If a brother decline that, the widow, 
at the city gate, in the face of all the people, shall 
pluck off his shoe, smite him with it, and spit in 
his face to show the public scorn of his mis- 



98 Ruth 

behavior. The widow, too, is accounted false to 
the memory of her dead husband if she does not 
claim this L,evirate marriage and so perpetuate 
his name and house. If there be no brother then 
the brother's duty falls upon the man of nearest 
kin. Even a wife already is no bar. The widow 
may be a second or a third wife. 

The thing in Naomi's mind is this L,evirate 
marriage of her widowed daughter to some near 
kinsman. Were she but a Jewess there should be 
no difficulty. She would go openly to the nearest 
of kin and make her lawful claim. But she is of 
Moab. If the kinsman be disinclined, he can 
make that escape. Hence the need of Naomi's 
mother-wit. Her heart, her honor, her comfort, 
the perpetuity of her house are all at stake. We 
have seen how, instantly, after the first day's 
gleaning, at the mention of the name of Boaz, the 
thought came — " Boaz ? Near of kin. He has 
right to redeem." The outline of the future is 
dimly there. For now three months or more Ruth 
has been daily in the rich man's fields, under his 
eye. She has constantly seen tokens of his gener- 
osity, nobility and interest in Ruth. Ruth, in her 
innocent simplicity and native modesty, has borne 
herself beautifully, as the mother knows. She 
knows, too, that her sweet, flushing Rose of Moab 
is fit in beauty, virtue and heart to grace and bless 
the home of Boaz or of any man in Israel. " It 
shall be, ' ' the mother says. She waited for events 
to contribute what they would — waited till the 
time was ripe and she could intervene to effect. 



Ruth 99 

She broaches the matter to her daughter onfy in 
the very hour of its execution. To have made 
her conscious would have spoiled all. But the 
hour has come. At the evening of this gay 
thresher's day she says, "My daughter, shall I 
not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with 
thee?" In truth, by this time, after these 
months of gleaner- work and poverty, facing more 
than half a year without even the gleaner's right 
to live, Ruth must have been ready for rest. 

Naomi plans by L,evirate law. As Ruth is of 
Moab, she must devise for certain success. She 
must meet no failure. Boaz is at the winnowing. 
He will sleep by his grain, for there was roguery 
even in those simple old times. One man's pile 
of wheat might swell at cost of another's in a 
night. He will lay himself down in his day's 
dress, with a thin cloth or mantle over all, under 
the open sky, with the men and women of his 
employ scattered in like slumbers all around. 
Servant and master often sleep under the same 
cloth, the servant crosswise at the master's feet. 
To ask the cover of your mantle is, in Oriental 
custom, to crave protection ; to grant it is to ex- 
tend the boon. In Jewish marriage it was part 
of the ceremonial that the bridegroom should 
cover with veil or mantle the head and shoulders 
of the bride. Is not that the secret of the bridal 
veil in our own day, — covert and protection? 

Boaz, for his integrity, piety and virtue was 
well known both to Naomi and Ruth, — a man 
whom child, servant, woman might trust implic- 






ioo Ruth 

itly. To sleeping Boaz Ruth shall come, shall 
lift the corner of his covering and lay herself 
down at his feet as a servant at the feet of a mas- 
ter. Judge the delicacy of this procedure by no 
modern standard. It was lawful proposal of 
Levirate marriage. Such proposal was custom, 
matter of course, and duty, and shocked no sense 
of propriety in Israel. Nor was marriage then, 
nor even now, essentially a matter of ceremonial. 
Man took woman to his house, and avowed her 
as his wife. Proposal, acceptance and acknowl- 
edgment of the relation was all. The entirety of 
the actual marriage ceremonial of Boaz and Ruth 
was his declaration that he had bought her to be 
his wife in the presence of the authorities of the 
city, " and he took her to his house and she was 
his wife." That was all. The marriage would 
have been held complete and stainless had Boaz 
simply said that night in answer to Ruth's pres- 
ence at his feet, "God bless thee, Ruth, — my 
wife," and had she replied, " Jehovah bless thee, 
Boaz, — my husband, ' ' and had they so proclaimed 
it at the city's gates on the morrow. 

Ruth followed implicitly the directions of her 
mother. At midnight Boaz wakes to find some 
one at his feet and, startled, demands who it 
may be. Ruth's soft and trembling voice replies, 
<( I am Ruth, thine handmaiden. Thou art he 
who should redeem ! ' ' He understands it per- 
fectly. She is under his protection, trusted to his 
honor. Even were his heart unconcerned, it 
should be, now, a difficult thing for him to reject 



Ruth 101 

the marriage. That was what Naomi contem- 
plated. But Boaz answered, showing a heart not 
unconcerned, " Blessed be thou of Jehovah, my 
daughter ! For thou shewest me greater kind- 
ness in the end than in the beginning, for thou 
hast refused the proffers of young men, rich or 
poor, and gives t thyself to me. I will do all thy 
requirement ; for all the city of my people know 
that thou art a virtuous woman." That word 
* ■ virtuous ' ' means here more than ' ' chaste. ' ' It 
involves that and all of noble and womanly quality 
and character besides. Then he told her that 
there was a kinsman of nearer degree than he, 
who had the first right to redeem. He had been 
thinking the matter through, you see, before this. 
He will see that kinsman to-morrow. He shall 
waive his right and Boaz will take his shoe and 
place. And Ruth would have departed. But 
the city gates are closed till morning. His Ruth 
must not wander defenceless in the open fields. 
So he bids her lie still at his feet till the day. In 
the dimness of the morning she rose to depart. 
He loaded her with grain and she went to the 
city and the waiting mother, told her all the 
noble behavior of Boaz, and the mother knew that 
their work was done and that that very day 
would see her daughter established as the hon- 
ored and beloved wife of the ' ' mighty man of 
wealth," of great repute and of character, her 
kinsman and her generous benefactor. And it 
was so. 

In the early morning he betook himself to the 



102 Ruth 

city gate, summoned the nearer kinsman, offered 
him the redemption of Naomi's land. The kins- 
man will take it. Bids him, then, redeem it of 
Ruth and take her to wife. 

People have been puzzled to know the kins- 
man's reason for this refusal. I imagine that it is 
not far to seek. Boaz meant all the while to 
be himself that redeemer, indeed had signified 
that he was ready to the place of redeemer and 
husband as well. Serious matter, the kinsman 
thought, for him to wed her whom Boaz fain 
would marry ! So he veiled his excuse under a 
prudent plea that he could not so mar his estate, 
and left to his cousin the prize on which his heart 
was evidently set. In token of the transfer he 
looses his sandal from his foot and gives it to 
Boaz. The elders of the city witness his purchase 
of all that belonged to the. family of Elimelech, 
and especially of Ruth to be his wife. All the 
people greet him with acclamations of congratula- 
tion, good wishes and blessings, grateful to his 
heart, I doubt not, and he goes, blessedest man 
of Bethlehem that day, to pluck his beautiful 
Rose, — whose very name is fragrant in Israel and 
the whole world to this day, — and bear her to his 
house, hold her to his heart, and throne her in 
his home. 

So Ruth's gleaning came to whole harvest, her 
widowhood to bridal blessed of man and of God 
and she found ' ' rest ' ' in the home of her husband. 

Mark the term "rest." It is the one Naomi 
used before when entreating her daughters to re- 



Ruth 103 

turn to their homes and gods in Moab, and again 
in sending Ruth to the feet of Boaz the night of 
the winnowing. 

Rest for woman in marriage — in the heart and 
home of her husband ! That is the exact thought 
of these queer old times in Israel and has been 
long and widely otherwhere and since. Is it, 
after all, so wide of the just truth ? Woman hath 
credit, at any rate, and good fame is it too, for 
living largely with her heart. If she have no 
heart, she is but a sham woman — an imposture. 
If she have one she does well to live with it. If 
her heart be unfilled her life is very empty. If 
her heart be unfixed there is for her no rest. 
Man ? The repute of him is that, if his hands be 
full, and his head, he can be content and live ; 
that work, success, absorption in affairs, winning 
reputation, riches, place, power can be made 
life for him, can content him. But woman must 
be satisfied in her affection, — must beloved ; nay, 
by the grandest need of her nature, must be 
loving to be blest or at all in rest. So the heart 
and home of her husband and her children must 
be her happy haven. Probably the theory con- 
cerning either is partly true and partly false. 
Actual men and women are not at their ideal 
always. Rest for either, to be perfect, must be 
in the sacred secret of a love-lit home. Out from 
that rest of a serene and happy home man must 
go full-girded and inspired to sturdy work in the 
outer world, to find there achievement, success, 
material with which to build, beautify and guard 



104 Ruth 

the lives he has garnered in his home. Woman, 
heart-full of children and husband ; hands full 
of all dear domesticities ; head full of cares, 
trainings, shapings for the household and the 
inner sanctuaries of all being — is not her life 
there? Of the world's necessity it must be. Of 
her own holy and tender nature it must be. Of 
her manifold and sacred wife and mother-duty it 
must be. The earning, wresting of substance for 
livelihood is, by all decrees of God and Nature, 
man's work, — life outside, for that which is to be 
brought in, put in woman's hand and wrought 
within the walls of the home to all use, suste- 
nance, comfort, beauty, fragrance, joy and weal. 

I will not be misunderstood. I am willing that 
woman should vote, whenever best womanhood 
wants to vote. I believe that St. Paul's prohibi- 
tion of public speech to woman was a local and 
temporary provision — an accommodation to the 
Oriental notion of indecency and gross immodesty 
in woman's uncovered face or spoken word in the 
presence of man other than her husband or son in 
the seclusion of the house. But for such injunc- 
tion carefully heeded in those times, the Christian 
Church would have been buried in its infancy 
under the odium of gross and promiscuous licen- 
tiousness. In spite of all precautions the heathen 
charge of such license, by occasion of their per- 
mission of women in their public assemblies for 
worship, was most frequent and persistent. I 
would open wide to woman the paths to all highest 
culture. I believe her in the hard work of the 



Ruth 105 

higher education in every way the peer of the 
other sex. I would open to her freely the door 
to any work or profession she may choose to enter 
and would pay her not for her sex but for her 
work — value for value according to the worth of 
it. To pay her for work just like mine or yours 
half what you or I receive is outrage against which 
she ought to protest, and all honest men ought to 
join their voices with hers in the outcry. There 
are women, — a few, — more fit for the outer work 
which men commonly do than for the inner sphere 
of mere domesticity, as there are men more fit for 
waiting-maids than for other service. Let woman 
do what she can do best, without scoff or 
hindrance. There will be in that no unwomaning 
of woman. No large numbers of them will be- 
take them to out-of-door and professional work. 
If in young ambition and opportunity they do be- 
take themselves so, why, still, woman will be 
woman and live w T ith her heart and will turn anon 
to the rest of the home — her husband and her 
children. Give her justice, liberty, opportunity 
and all the clamor will cease. Till then it ought 
not to die out. The old cry of taxation without 
representation is valid. To hinder her by law or 
the tyranny of custom from doing what she can 
do as well as you or I is sheer injustice — male 
trade-union tyranny, meanest on earth. 

Nevertheless, the rest of woman will ever be in 
the home where she is undisputed queen, by that 
common law of nature which makes short work 
of arbitrary statutes. A cause shall she wed ? It 



106 Ruth 

is too impalpable a thing for her heart. A faith ? 
Ah, these so-called brides of Christ are restless, 
wronged, abnormal, cheated out of half their 
Christly life ! These sisters, aunts, and gentle, 
unmatched souls, that abide in the homes, caring 
for aged parents, or flit from home to home where 
is need of kindly ministrants and loving helps, who 
serve at the altars of every charity and all piety, 
having a kind of monopoly of goodness and spe- 
cial commission for all well-doing — they do get, 
I think, woman's full heart-rest, and for their 
sweet self-sacrifice, great and rich reward, from 
man and from God, despite the sneers of idiots ! 
They are oflenest not the sour and unlovely, but 
of truest, tenderest womanhood — in other case had 
blessed each the home of one as now she blesses 
the homes of many. 

Rest in the house of a husband ! Alas that it 
should ever be a mere dream before the waking 
in a house full of rough and unloving usage, of 
drunkenness, profanity and infidelity ! Rest of 
body, mind, heart, gone for the fated woman for- 
evermore. Rest to be hoped for only beyond the 
River. The life of woman as wife in the hands of 
loveless, untender, selfish, cruel, false and vicious 
men ! Ah, there be broken hearts in palaces as 
in hovels, bleeding hearts under silk and velvet 
as under cottons and calico ! Many a wife in halls 
of luxury would exchange all her splendors for a 
cottage and a crust if he, the husband, were but 
faithful and affectionate, as he used to vow and 
she used to think. 



Ruth 107 

Nevertheless, woman's rest shall be, while the 
world stands, in the house of her husband, and 
man's in the home, the sweet light, tender content 
and ministering love of wife and child — glad troops 
of children. ' \ It is not good to be alone. ' ' Home- 
rest from a thousand hurtful fancies, strong 
temptations, vagrant passions ! Home, where sit 
and shed abroad their love, sweet-faced, prudent, 
sound-hearted wives and mothers amid their happy 
children, — these are the salvation of our men and 
times. God's curse rests on any mode of artificial 
civilization or barbarism which does not cherish 
the holy home. Let marriage come to honor, in 
early man and womanhood, fortunes yet to be 
made, work and hardness shared together, of 
twain one flesh and heart for weal or woe, riches 
or poverty, joy or sorrow, till death do part. Di- 
vorce, let it be the solemn and awful punishment 
of the one crime for w T hich the Christ prescribes 
it. Civilization will so make a grand stride 
upward. 

So Naomi seeks rest for her Ruth according 
to Levirate law in Israel. To him who looks on 
it through the old Jewish light aud air, with a 
clean, pure heart, no picture of all this book is 
more beautiful and touching than that of the fair 
and timid woman coming to the feet of sleeping 
Boaz, lifting the end of his long mantle from his 
sandalled feet and drawing it over her own face as 
she lays herself down there beneath the stars and 
God's protection in token of her right and claim to 
her kinsman's shelter, name and home. He sleeps 



108 Ruth 

the sleep of the weary, the generous, the noble 
and the just. He wakes to find innocence, purity, 
beauty and helplessness lawfully craving his strong 
and loving defense. His speech is purity, piety 
and dignity. His purpose and act are worthy of 
his true and stainless chivalry and of her gentle 
and holy womanhood. So we leave them with 
the favor of God and the light of the stars shining 
down upon them in the Judean night, may be on 
the very spot where by and by the ' ' Shepherds 
watched their flocks by night,' ' on whom the 
heavenly splendor broke, and to whom the angels 
sang that wonder song of Glory, Peace, Good- 
will, at the birth of Him — the heavenly Seed of 
their more than royal line. Sleep on, sweet Ruth, 
at the feet of thy strong and pure protector, 
blessed of the God of Israel, under whose wings 
thou art come to trust ! The stars of the night 
shall fade into the sunlight of a long and bright 
and beautiful day of happiness and fame for thee ! 



Ruth 109 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WIFE, THE HOME, THE MOTHER. 

Blessed be the Lord this day, who hath not left thee without 
a kinsman, that his name may be Jamous in Israel; a Restorer 
of Life shall he be unto thee and a Nourisher of thine old age. 

1 'And Boaz took Ruth and she was his wife, ' ' 
took her from the humble cottage and hard lot 
where, in her gleaner's poverty, she had dwelt 
with her mother. 

In the early morning, after the winnowing, Boaz 
went up to the gate of the city and sat him down 
there. It was the hour and place for assemblage 
of the elders and rulers of the town for transaction 
of any public business. It was the public assem- 
bly, court and exchange. He was sure to find 
there in the course of the morning everybody of 
consequence in the city. Behold the nearest kins- 
man of Naomi and Elimelech — he comes ! Boaz 
calls him by name. "Ho ! such a one, come and 
sit here beside me." And he did so. Then, se- 
lecting ten men of the elders of the city, that is, of 
the governing body of it, he bids them take their 
seats. The procedure is a recognized legal one. 
So seated they constituted a legitimate authority 
and sat as such. Boaz opens at once the business 
for which he has called them, here in the place of 



no Ruth 

public concourse, just inside the city gate. Naomi, 
he tells them, sells her reversionary right in the 
estate that had been Klimelech's. You understand 
what that means. Klimelech, going to Moab, 
had sold his estate so far as Jewish law allowed, 
that is for the remainder of the years to the next 
Jubilee. Then it will return to him or his heirs. 
The present occupant holds it till then. His 
widow can sell the property for its value, less the 
present occupant's claim for the years that remain 
to Jubilee. The purchaser may, if he can, buy 
off the present claim and go into immediate pos- 
session, else w r aits till the next Jubilee and then 
holds. If he buy also the sole next heir to be his 
wife, then the property is settled into the hands 
of his family forever. So the transaction of that 
morning at the gate of Bethlehem is clear. Boaz 
proposes to the nearest kinsman, "Will you re- 
deem this land of Naomi ? I am next of kin to 
you and am ready to do it if you can not. " * ' Yes, 
that will I do. I can stand that and will. " " But 
there is an heir concerned, a son's widow. The 
estate is to be bought of her, not for a rental value, 
but for a perpetual estate, by merging the two 
branches of the family into one. And the pur- 
chaser must assume the duties and responsibilities 
of the Levirate marriage.' ' This is a far more 
serious and more costly matter. The kinsman 
sees, or makes as if he saw, that this is beyond 
his power. He sees, too, doubtless, more of the 
real purpose of Boaz, and pleads his inability to 
meet such a charge. 4 4 1 can not redeem it. Take 



Ruth in 

thou my right and redeem it for thyself." And, 
according to the custom of ratifying such real- 
estate transactions, he plucked off his sandal and 
gave it for pledge of good faith ; the terms of the 
contract were recited in the hearing of the elders 
and the people, the record of it made and 
laid up with the sandal in the public keeping, and 
the transaction is complete. Boaz announces that 
he takes Ruth as his wife. Elders and people re- 
spond, "We are witnesses," and felicitate him 
upon his marriage so instituted, extend to him 
their hearty good wishes on the event, and there 
is nothing more for him to do but to take Ruth, 
without further ceremony, to his own home as 
his wife. 

1 ' Home " is a word which in this world has 
had little meaning save in Israel and in Christian 
lands, amongst Christian races. In Israel every- 
thing was to save and sanctify the home and the 
family. A vast proportion of divinely given 
Jewish law, concerning property, titles, real es- 
tate, debt and service ; a vast body of the social 
codes and codes of morals and of religion, was pri- 
marily for establishing, guarding and making per- 
petual the home-life. If the home were wrecked 
in one generation by improvidence, misfortune or 
crime, the basis for its re-establishment in the next 
could not be destroyed. The family estate could 
only be alienated until the next Jubilee. What 
a bar such a provision must have been to entailed 
and inherited pauperism, and what an abolition 
of hopeless poverty ! 



H2 Ruth 

We arc glad, I am sure, to know that Boaz 
took Ruth, his wile, to his own home. The sys- 
tem of hotel and boarding-house had not come in 
vogue in Israel. The hue Orient has no place 
for either. The family, in settled Israel, was to 

beat home. Not in a place of temporary sojourn 

with boxes and bales in every corner, and all the 

pretty nothings and remembrances and little 
nameless conveniences that make life familiar and 

put it at ease packed away and stored somewhere. 
The family at home amid its own, not asleep in 
other's beds, sitting at other's tables, amid other's 
furniture, wanned by other's fires and subject to 
move at other's whims () that is life! The 
home, which is the castle, safe from the intrusion 
of all but the welcomed, that is the place to bring 
the bride to, to make her queen in — she all yours 
and you all hers— working out together so the 
great, sweet problem, <4 of twain one flesh, M of 
two lives one life ! The home, however humble, 
whose expenditure shall be something more than 
met by honest income, should be the joy and am- 
bition of marriage. For the children, while they 
grow, the home is the place. liberty there, swing, 
ownership and opportunity ! They may play and 
laugh and sing and shout there. Their voices and 
merry rout are music to the mother's and father's 
(lis. It is just noise to the boarders ! To hush 
it up is lifelong loss to the children — to the frank- 
fulness and joy fulness of character and life. In 
your own home you Can settle their companion 
ships, their habits, their employments, their man- 



Ruth 113 

ners — all ! Family life must be lived at home. 
Home is the place for men, women, and children. 
From the vantage-ground of a pure and happy 
home any race can best fight all the works of the 
Devil and of devilish men. On it is builded the 
whole social, moral, and political fabric of this 
race of ours and the hope of its future. Boaz took 
Ruth to his own home and so set it up amongst 
the good and holy and healthful powers of Israel. 

He calls the elders to witness that he has 
' ' bought ' ' Ruth to be his wife ! The expression 
offends. That very thing used to be done, is done 
yet in lands of the unspeakable blackness. So 
much for such a woman for a wife ! Done ! Sold ! 
into grievous slavery. Alack ! though the express 
custom be out, that there should be in our civ- 
ilzation somewhat of this very thing afoot, for 
mockery of a sacred tie and desecration of the 
home — a kind of wife-purchase and sale as by the 
unspeakable races, mothers selling their daugh- 
ters to worthless men and rakes for splendors, and 
daughters consenting to the sale for palaces, 
equipage and ambition and title. God have pity 
on slave and master ! 

But this word in the story which we study is 
but a word, and Ruth was ' ' bought ' ' only in the 
technical sense of the L,evirate marriage. She 
was the chief part, the Pearl of Price, in the estate 
of her dead husband. Herself was the sole mo- 
tive of the purchase of the estate. 

In the home — its minor economies, its beauty, 
grace, and honor; its movement, thrift and de- 



H4 Ruth 

light — Ruth, I hope, was queen, her wish the 
gentle law of Boaz's liberty and joy — he there as 
a gracious, honored and beloved guest, royally 
entreated. 

Of that household, however, there is no doubt 
that Boaz was the head. Iyittle question about 
that in those ignorant old times. In very truth 
that queer old book, — the Bible, — leaves little 
question about that in any time. Husbands may 
be brutes and tyrants and make heavenly law 
seem infernal, even as termagant women may by 
clangors and tempers bear ugly rule over easy- 
going husbands, who will not contend even for 
honor, nor fight for peace. But nature has fixed 
it that man shall be the bread-winner, responsible 
for the food, shelter and livelihood of his house. 
That carries ultimate headship — the inalienable 
necessity for it. The bread-winner must, in the 
last resort, decide where and how he can win it. 
It will be with counsel and conference, but the 
deciding vote must be his. There can be no 
abrogation of that right till woman fights the 
family fight for food and builds and maintains the 
family home. Then headship falls to her as of 
essential right. Nature and God have fixed all 
that in the outer necessity and in the very fibre 
of soul and body. The rough, hirsute, bold, 
roaring, imperious, is given to the sex that needs 
it. The supple, graceful, gentle, winsome and 
domestic to the sex whose glory is to need and 
use them. The vast majority of true-hearted 
men scarce dream on, nor ever use, their ultimate 



Ruth 115 

control, and the vast majority of all true women 
yield themselves without a thought of subjection 
to the theory of nature, with heart so loyal as to 
win man to surrender even of his right. Good 
men and true women stand wedded into the 
world's ideal of mutual command and service. 
Royalty of man and woman, each in the special 
sphere of their joined life is true marriage in the 
sweet dominion of the home. Law can not do 
much for definition here, but common sense and 
love, which alone make marriage lawful, will not 
miss it. There will not be mistake on any 
wide scale. Some silly men and loud women will 
make their individual blunders and wrecks, but 
the homes of men will move on in peace and weal 
in all the harmonies of the sweetest of human 
love. May the benignant God watch on that ! 

So Boaz and Ruth set up, and exult in the pure 
delight of their own home in Bethlehem, loving 
and beloved, proud and blessed, God-fearing and 
heaven-protected, and Naomi with them — not the 
over-shadow of a dread, but the abiding of a bene- 
diction. 

Anon into this beautiful life comes a day, 
longed for and feared. For its approach all the 
house has become gentler, more reverent and full 
of an unnamed tenderness. A day, it is, full of 
anguish and travail, but at its close all faces 
brighten, all clouds pass and all hearts are glad 
as they cry the old cry of nativity, "Unto us a 
child is born ! Unto us a son is given ! ' ' The 
heart of the bride, full before of her love, takes 



n6 Ruth 

now fourfold bigness and holds a new love, deep- 
er, more brooding and wonderful than the old, 
and then finds the old three-fold more big and 
mighty than before. Motherhood has given to 
wifehood new reach and sweetness, — has found 
new deeps in a nature that had depths. Woman- 
hood opens in wifehood into new worlds of power 
and fervor. Wifehood blooming into motherhood 
is woman's coronation — the glory and beauty, 
the transfiguration of humanity. The Madonna 
and Child are the lofty dream of art, hinted at, 
approached, never yet reached on canvas, but 
realized in ten thousand times ten thousand 
homes ! Many a giddy girl has turned into a 
royal wife, and many a frivolous bride has great- 
ened into an unselfish, deep-hearted and devoted 
mother. Here is her full experience of love, of 
sorrow and of joy — of service, of royalty and of 
rest. 

As the neighbor women saw the boy, whom 
Naomi had taken to her bosom, they said unto 
her, ' ' Blessed be the Lord, who hath not left thee 
this day without a kinsman, that his name may be 
famous in Israel. A restorer of life shall he be 
unto thee and a nourisher of thine old age." 
Restorer of thy life, Naomi. Thy life? Mainly 
past, lying there behind thee, in the realms of sad 
memories. Now, in that grandson, sleeping in 
thine arms, life opens again onward, before thee. 
Somehow thou art in the child. A second, fresh 
but stiller, motherhood has come to thee. In him 
thou reachest down into the distant and fascina- 



Ruth 117 

ting future. Life rekindles at the touch, is re- 
stored already. 

It is ever so, as loving children's children are 
put into grand-parent's arms. In children of the 
second generation kindly souls seem to live more 
joyfully and peacefully than in their own. The 
heat of labor and the unrest of responsibility are 
past. The life down into another age of the 
world is come. Sweet indeed is the evening of 
life amid the groups of loving and reverent child- 
ren' s children. Blessed is the benediction of these 
shining old faces, aglow with the light of coming 
worlds, beaming out from the halo of their silver 
hair. Holy and helpful are the memories which 
these almost perfected saints leave in the hearts 
of the little ones who climb on their knees and 
hear the stories of the olden time ! Restorer of 
life, Naomi, and nourisher of thine old years have 
come to thee in this babe of Ruth — the Rose thou 
didst gather and bring to Israel out of Moab, 
plucking it from the graves of thy dead over 
there. Thy gracious motherhood has brought 
thee ten-fold blessed reward, as kindliness and 
Godliness are like to do. 

A thing more in the words of the women. 
"Thy daughter-in-law, who loveth thee, and is 
better to thee than seven sons." How delightful 
their testimony to the place Ruth had won in all 
hearts ! These Jewish women would not be likely 
to receive very graciously the Moabitish new- 
comer into their midst, into the very bosom of a 
chief family. Nothing but a right gracious and 



n8 Ruth 

noble and winning lovableness could have gotten 
for her this most hearty and beautiful tribute 
from these neighbor women. Much study and 
facility in speech could not have phrased it better. 
Jewish women could not have set in words a 
higher estimate of her womanly worth. And 
this high estimate of the mother assured them 
that the boy should come to famous name in 
Israel. Her quality in him should make that 
sure. Blood is thicker than water. Character is 
substance of heritage. To frail and sinful man 
solemn must that thought be. It shall go hard 
but that your fault shall re-appear in your child. 
Your weakness may make difficult or desperate 
the case of them that come after you. Your sin 
may come down in awful visitation on those dearer 
to you than life — on generations of the yet un- 
born, when you are dead. Earth is full of inher- 
ited depravity of body and soul. The sins of 
generations long gone to dust are fruiting in our 
day. Our slums are full of vice, crime and 
wretchedness so bred as to have been inevitable. 
Half our plagues and rots are the rascal heritage 
from those who had no right to curse us so. 
Every plague-smitten soul leaves its contagion to 
the generation after. Inheritance of resistless 
appetite for drink, lust, greed, cruelty, meanness, 
is the law. Fathers and mothers corrupt in 
morals, broken in integrity, set their children out 
into curse. Damnations flow in the currents of 
damned blood. This world and the worse world 
are full of woes and perditions inherited. It shall 



Ruth 119 

go hard, but you find every fault and default of 
your child in your own person. Even his trifling 
habits of body, temper, tricks of movement are, 
likely, but reproductions of you. It is an awful 
thing to think on, but we are bound to face it. 
Yet for our comfort there is the other side, the 
side which the women of Bethlehem took. Good 
quality, too, runs down the lines of descent. 
Virtues course through the generations in a 
swelling flood. Ruth's sweet nobilities shall re- 
appear in the boy she has borne. She brought 
in qualities which it was well to have in the royal 
line of Israel, in David and Solomon, in Mary the 
mother of Jesus, nay, which should help to shape 
well the gentle and holy human nature of our 
Lord Himself. 

Another side of comfort. If virtue be growing 
and evil fading, beauty increasing and deformities 
passing, that will count in the lines of heritage. 
The forces of that advancing redemption will be 
the inheritance. Then there is, beyond, the holy 
Covenant, — You and your children ! Redeemed 
generation after generation shall breed out the 
damnations which generations have brought in. 
This, too, of holy hope. Taught of God to see 
your own sins, and so to anticipate the tendency 
in your child, you will guard him there with 
tender concern, in strenuous sense of responsi- 
bility for saving him from the evil which you 
have entailed upon him. You will put him 
eagerly into the Covenant of God for guarding 
him just there and will gird him with faith and 



120 Ruth 

ceaseless prayer ; and you and God and he shall 
turn his evil heritage into victory and greatness. 
The evil inheritance shall be cut off from the gen- 
erations and moral heroism inherited instead. So, 
sin after sin, weakness after weakness, in you 
and in your child, rooted out, fought out with 
holy heroism and at cost, the heritage shall be ever 
sweeter and finer till the race shall stand in the 
beauty and glorious power of the perfect redemp- 
tion. The New Heaven and the New Earth shall 
have come ! 

Every generation has awful, blessed command 
of the generations that are to be. Justly damned 
be he who works a new sin, a deeper vice or 
weakness, and so, a bitterer misery into the fabric 
of the world's ages. Blessed be he who works 
out of his own or any line of descent one curse or 
tendency to evil that has flowed down thus far, — 
who can stand in the current of the generations 
and sturdily cry to one damnation, "Thus far, 
but no farther ! ' ' The women of Bethlehem, with 
unconscious philosophy, were sure that the grace 
and fine nobility of Ruth would make grand the 
very quality of her son's inheritance. 

I have been, now, a long time telling over the 
story of this rich old book of Ruth. Of literature 
there is not a sweeter, purer bit in the world. Of 
characters more simply painted, or with more 
masterly art, there are none in all letters. Of 
personages in themselves stronger, purer or more 
noble there are none in history, while the quaint 
and simple old times and ways throw over all a 



Ruth 121 

mellow and fascinating light. Ruth, Naomi, 
Elimelech, Mahlou, Chilion and the dim old 
land of Moab ; the graves there and the sorrow, 
the loneliness and poverty ; Orpah turning back 
with tears and veiled face, walking slowly away 
out of the world's sight forever more, w r hile Ruth 
stands with burning eyes uplifted to say, ' ' Naomi, 
my mother, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to 
return from following after thee : for whither thou 
goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I will 
lodge : thy people shall be my people, and thy 
God my God : where thou diest, I will die, and 
there will I be buried : the Lord do so to me, and 
more also, if aught but death part thee and me." 
Matchless words of a perfect devotion. Ruth, 
the gleaner, beautiful and lowly, in Boaz's field, 
blessed of Jehovah, under whose wings she had 
come to trust. Ruth, the widow, laying herself 
at Boaz's feet in utter purity and trust under the 
stars and Jehovah's care and Jewish law. Ruth, 
the wife, beloved, and the mother. Boaz, — the 
grave and courtly, generous and kindly, the noble 
and Godly; the mighty man of war, of wealth, 
and of honor in Israel. Naomi, the tender, strong 
and sagacious ; the stricken but not broken ; the 
aged but alert ; the scheming yet grand — holding 
at last in her arms the ancestor of our Lord, 
The workmen in the field, the threshing and the 
winnowing, the primitive scene at the city gate 
between Boaz, the kinsman, and the elders, — we 
have had them all, and know, I hope, this beau- 
tiful'book better than we did.- I have been tell- 



122 Ruth 

ing the story thoughtfully as I could, stopping 
ever by the way to follow out some hint and sug- 
gestion, talking so of many a thing one would 
not have thought to make a sermon on, not seem- 
ing to drag anything in wantonly, I hope, nor to 
speak on anything unfit for utterance nor profit- 
less to hear. 

It may be a little necessary to say that I hold 
Christianity to be not a mere religion, but that 
and much more, — even a law for the whole of 
life, individual and social, — the ideal of that life 
and the regimen to effect it. To preach it, there- 
fore, is to touch actual life everywhere, and in all 
its interests and relations. Many a truest Chris- 
tian sermon shall not be a discourse of religion, 
of piety towards God, or of the soul, but of Man 
in himself and in his relations in business and 
society and politics, under the law of righteous- 
ness and of love. So the preacher shall apply 
Christian speech to every need and use of man 
present, temporal, earthly as well as spiritual, 
heavenly and eternal. He must be free in wide 
ranges of utterance. 

In closing with this book, let me say, — we have 
studied it to ill effect if we have not learned to 
see with a certain fresh clearness that every life is 
a plan of God, — every soul a structure of God, 
unlike any other and made for a career of its own, 
which will bring it to sure glory, greatness, and 
right place, so it bear itself brave, true and Godly. 
Only perverseness and wicked self-will can wreck 
it. Ruth was made, meant of God, led from a 



Ruth 123 

simple Moabitish maiden by many a circuit, 
through many a mystery, to her nobleness of ex- 
quisite womanhood, to the people of God, to 
great estate, — to the ancestry of David and of 
David's Greater Son. So, for every one of us is 
laid a Divine scheme of greatness and glory, 
whether in this world or other, will we but bear 
ourselves humbly, obediently, lovingly towards 
God and Christ and our fellows. The lesson is 
of a Divine trust. * ' As many as are led by the 
Spirit of God they are the Sons of God," partak- 
ers of the Divine Nature — like the Christ and 
joined with Him in His vast and eternal Heirdom. 
Toward that Heirdom of Crown and Kingdom and 
Christly Beauty may the feet of each of us be 
daily walking. 



124 Ruth 



CHAPTER VIII 

STEADFASTNESS VS. IMPULSE. 
Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clave unto her. 

To cleave steadfastly is better than to kiss 
impulsively. To abide through thick and thin, 
evil and good report, clear and cloudy weather, is 
fairer showing of love than any momentary glow 
of passionate impulse. Ruth was of nobler qual- 
ity than Orpah. The child who springs to em- 
brace you and smother you with kisses may be a 
more fascinating creature for a sunny hour than 
that shy and silent one who just lets the still 
waters of a very great tenderness flow and ripple 
through her soul, keeping it mellow and fertile 
for loving deeds. The first may leap, by and by, 
in as mighty an impulse to break your heart. 
The other will just as tenderly watch for your 
gladness, minister to you in sorrow, and hover 
about you as a good angel through all the years. 

The truth is, that the passion of an impulsive 
soul is very good, if it be good. But the steady 
working of a grounded and principled devotion is 
better. Under these hot impulses the only safety is 
a firm steerage or a mighty anchorage of principled 
adhesion to the right — to the Christ. 



Ruth 125 

These impulses ? You know them. They are 
the leap of hot blood, blind, toward things 
evil as readily as things good. They follow 
the rovings of a wayward fancy. They thrill 
towards fascinations merely. They take no 
account of reason or right or safety. They are 
blind to all but fascination. They have no qual- 
ity of prudence or morality. They have no fit- 
ness for guidance. They are nothing for pilotage. 
They are meant as grand helps of going and of 
joy — when you have settled your right direction 
and they tide in to send you booming up the 
grades of virtue. They are set as disciplines, 
that you may find power, — establishment of char- 
acter, manfulness and womanliness, — by holding 
them in check, in constant and steadfast control, 
whether they reach out toward good or evil. 
You must be the serene master of your impulses 
alway. These impulses ? They oftener than 
otherwise have their seat in the flesh and are 
kindled by proffers to the senses. They come by 
shining of the sun, by tonic of a good north wind. 
They are born of the foam of the sea or the breath 
of the mountains or forests, from the fair digestion 
of a good dinner or the flush of vigorous exercise. 
The glow of a goodly face will kindle them, or 
the fellowship of a fascinating companion — be he 
angel or devil. A word, a song, a hand-clasp 
will waken them. They are the creatures of any 
circumstance which may touch the surface of 
your life. Why, you can draw them from a wine- 
cup ; can stir them in matchless power, in delir- 



126 Ruth 

ious sweetness by a grain of opium or hasheesh. 
But to-morrow the sun is clouded, the wind is 
east; sultry, sodden days have settled down on 
the hard- worked man ; the digestion is amiss; the 
inspiration of the wine-cup has given place to its 
reaction, and these glowing impulses, these gush- 
ing sentiments are no more. Blue things and 
cadaverous, as uncanny as those were delightful, 
have come to inhabit in their seats. The impul- 
sive child is as wayward as she was sweet. The 
woman of mere impulse is as ungracious as she was 
delightful. The man who glowed so is a churl. 
The whole school is at odds and unendurable. 
The wind blows and the sweet things bloom ! 
The wind blows and the sweet things are dead ! 

Try it ! Let your mere impulse govern in bus- 
iness. To-day all is fair, body and mind alert, 
nerves steady, the whole man full of vigor ; bright 
visions all a-play. Go to your business then. 
Push it. Work eagerly, with delight. Ah-ha ! 
Now the world moves ! This is life and some- 
thing like ! But to-morrow you wake tired, the 
air seems heavy, the rainbows have gone out. 
There is tedium in your very bones. You have 
no impulse to your day's work. Sleep it through, 
then ? Is that the way of men who command the 
world and conquer fortune? Or some vagrant 
impulse seizes you and carries you off hither and 
thither, and that is the habit of life, — to do busi- 
ness or shirk it, to work or idle, to do this or 
that or nothing, just as you happen at the moment 
to feel, just as the impulse of the hour takes you. 



Ruth 127 

That were idiocy — should as little win success as 
deserve it. That would stop sharp all the wheels 
on which the world rolls. The business man of 
character and success is he who, day after day, 
body alert or heavy, wind one way or other, 
weather fine or perverse, works his work ; with 
settled and determined will concentrates, com- 
pels into shape and activity all his manly forces 
and holds them to it till his work is done. That 
is his manliness. He has girded himself, denied 
a thousand impulses, held straight on, gaining 
strength as he wrought success and conquering 
success by his accruing strength. So men grow 
great in the discipline, self-control and long strug- 
gle of business life. Dr. Kane once said in answer 
to a wonder that his will had enabled so frail a 
body to endure and achieve so much : ' ' Will ? 
Will can do anything. It can lift a man out of 
his boots!" Aye, it can, and set him into 
winged slippers like those in whose swift grace 
the fabled Mercury could fly like light through 
all heavens and around all worlds. Differences 
among men are a thousand times more in this 
thing — a mighty and persistent will than in any 
other mental or moral endowment whatever. 
Anybody has brains enough to succeed in almost 
anything if he had only the self-control to fix 
himself on, and hold himself to, the thing he 
seeks, — a royalty of will to gird himself in from 
all dissipations of energy, — to summon up his 
faculties into unanimity within himself, and hold 
himself four-square against all waverings of pur- 



128 Ruth 

pose. The invincible purpose of the man who 
was coughed down in his first attempt to speak 
in the British Parliament, which found utterance 
through his Jewish beard in the fierce exclama- 
tion, " But you shall hear me yet ! " made all the 
difference between abject failure and the supreme 
subtlety of graceful speech and the most masterly 
of all leadership in English cabinet and European 
council for many a long and critical year. On 
that man's power hung once the cordial amity of 
the two great branches of the English-speaking 
world. On that man's power in debate and in 
diplomacies hinged, once and again, the tremen- 
dous question of peace or war for half the globe ! 

Accomplishment in the world depends mainly 
on a set and unalterable will to accomplish, — a 
will which puts aside diffidence and fear, difficulty 
and laziness, appetite and temptation, which takes 
no counsel of impulse, but compels every faculty 
to play of its best energy towards the thing deter- 
mined on. That is power, the best and uttermost 
of any maifcs power. All save a splendid few 
have largely w r asted themselves, and vast multi- 
tudes by infirmity of purpose are throwing them- 
selves utterly away. 

Imagine, if you can, the absolute woman of im- 
pulse in a house. Could such a thing be ? To-day 
she is in the enthusiasm of cookery and her house- 
hold is fed. To-morrow the epidemic of house- 
hold cleansing comes on and all the house is set 
on edge and uproar. Next day she shall take a 
high notion of government and heaven help the 



Ruth 129 

little folks and the husband ! Anon a literary 
furor will absorb her, and alas for the home and 
the printers ! Then a missionary frenzy seizes her 
and her friends all wish that they lived heathens 
in Borrioboola-Gha! Then she must by Divine im- 
pulsion feed and clothe all the hungry and naked 
in her city. Those days, friends, you would do 
well to lunch down town and wear your best 
clothes, else you won't be able to go to church 
next Sunday for lack of them ! When no special 
impulse is on her let her idle and sleep and care for 
nothing. She shall look to the sweeping, cook- 
ing, care of the house and clothing of the chil- 
dren, when the fit is on — just as she feels. Shall 
be patient, cheery, kindly or the other thing ! just 
according to her mood. Of course such a woman 
is an impossibility, never was, is not, never could 
be. Nobody could live with her. She would 
never have held of one mind long enough to 
become the mistress of anybody's house. But 
think what a figure the woman of mere impulse 
would be, if she could be at all, in the midst of 
life's duty and steady routine. Day in and day out, 
with patient, loving persistency, woman works her 
unending work, despite her frames, her weakness, 
weariness and often distastes. So only, command- 
ing and constraining all impulses of the most im- 
pulsive nature, is woman woman and home home 
and the earth habitable or inhabited. No child 
of his own impulse ever got through the alphabet ; 
no youth ever mastered, so, any study; no college 
boy his course ; no mechanic any trade ; no man 



130 Ruth 

any science ; no professional man any profession. 
Nobody ever learned any calling or prosecuted 
it to success without continually mastering him- 
self, denying himself, living not of impulse but of 
set and inexpugnable purpose. God be praised 
that necessity is grim, made of iron and inexor- 
able, so that we can not even live without rising 
to some dignity of self-command — some fixity and 
mightiness of will. The boy who can not or will 
y^not govern himself, fix on a course of hard work 
* and many vSelf-denials and then hold himself to 
it, rigidly, will never be a successful or even an 
honest man. Boys who grow up to be men — (for, 
my boy, you may live to be a hundred years old 
and yet never grow to be a man. Boys and girls 
grow but do not all grow "up." Some of them 
grow down instead) — boys who "grow up" to 
be men have to break themselves, hold, drive and 
train themselves as men do colts. This fine, im- 
pulsive boy, with his big, wide-open, eager eyes, 
his enthusiastic, susceptible, generous, leaping na- 
ture, — ah, there is power here ! He is full of it ! 
It bursts out of him as steam hisses out through 
every valve and flaw of an engine. It bubbles 
over at every chance, No wonder the father and 
mother watch him breathless, half afraid of him, 
as if he were likely to burst. He is admirable 
and to be loved. A splendid manhood is throb- 
bing under that jacket, or — I know not what ! A 
grand gift to the world — this boy — or, as grand 
a curse. Which ? That is the question. Look 
along the street corners; go out into the midnights 



Ruth 131 

of this or any town, or to the Sunday resorts, 
then come back and look into your boy's face and 
ask, "Which?" These hot, eager impulses of 
his are his chance of greatness, are his peril of 
doom. Pleasures of the senses allure his keen 
appetites. Agreeable companions, gone further 
than he, lead him on. Many a vice with Siren's 
song catches his passions. The tinsel, glitter and 
merry comradery of the saloon attract him. The 
strange and subtle excitement of the cup thrills 
every nerve of his keenly sensitive body and, for 
the hour, every fiber of his soul as well. Frail 
women with their infinite bewilderments catch 
at his young lusts. The world is full of corrupt 
and flashy literature, in newspapers and in yellow 
covers, and fiery novels, and filthy dramas. False 
theories of life and success bewilder him with 
their glitter and make the common ways of com- 
mon life seem humdrum. A dash of recklessness 
seems manly, gives him applause and leadership 
among his fellows. A getting out of the steady 
ways of home has novelty and liberty and swing 
in it, — adventure ! He must ' ' see life ' ' ! Games 
of chance and ventures in gambling and fraud by 
which he sees fortunes made are like to ensnare 
him. The taste for things untried and forbidden 
has in itself strange fascination. All the ways of 
sin are wide open to your boy. Their panders 
have no scruple and no pity. Without the tremor 
of a nerve or the hesitancy of a moment they will 
thrust your boy through the very gates of Hell. 
The ways of evil seem wide, easy and flower- 



132 Ruth 

strewn. Step by step, vice on vice, sin trailing 
troops of sin, the ways getting easier and easier, 
the descents to the Devil getting steeper and 
steeper, the good powers loosing their grip on 
him — Alack ! The end ! 

You remember, perhaps, the story of the old 
stage-driver over the Sierras. He was dying. To 
his comrades gathered round him he gasped out : 
"Boys, I'm on the down grade, sharp, and the 
brakes won't work ! " As I look on many a boy 
and young man I think of that poor fellow. The 
descents ahead are terrible, the speed is wild, the 
turns are sharp and the brakes won't work ! Alas, 
the precipices below! The boy, the girl, the youth 
who has just flung the reins on the neck of appe- 
tite and impulse is lost, i,ost, LOST ! These 
mighty impulses which should, guided and con- 
trolled, have made him grand will run him 
a-wreck. Many a most nobly endowed, loving 
and generous boy has run through a career of 
misery and disgrace to the grave of a drunkard, 
a pauper or a felon — a torture to the whole circle 
of his lovers while he lived, and a terrible memory 
when he was dead. 

Ah, my brave boy, my beautiful girl, you must 
have something besides native nobility of nature. 
You must be manful and womanly enough to hold 
your impulses dead-still when they would lead 
you to wrong, to let them to play out only to the 
noble and pure and holy. 

The most generous, best endowed, and most 
nobly impulsive fellow of my college class, — my 



Ruth 133 

very soul is in tears as I remember my once inti- 
mate friend, — went down through dissipation to 
mental confusion and the grave at a little beyond 
thirty, extinguishing so one of the most famous 
and brilliant names of our Republic. Every city, 
town, community has seen some of its fairest, 
most fascinating and beautiful lives go down 
through fearful darkness into — What ? No street 
but has its stately mansion haunted by some 
such terrible memory. Happy the family that 
must not ever pass some dear name in silence and 
look on some vacant place with ever new heart- 
break, till grey heads go down bowed in per- 
petual sorrow to the grave ! 

No man's native impulses can be trusted to 
carry him well or keep him safe. For these 
glowing, generous, loving boys and girls, mothers, 
bend your knees in perpetual prayer. Fathers, 
give them every stout moral tonic of instruction 
and example and wise government. Ye friends, 
gather all gladness, beauty and purity about them 
to help them in their grand fight. And do Thou, 
dear Lord, enforce them by the mighty inspira- 
tions of the Holy Spirit ! Make infinite in gra- 
cious power their wills for a holy self-mastery ! 
Lead out their impulses to the right, the true, the 
Holy ! Bind them by their glowing hearts to 
Thy blessed Son ! Then, — then only will they 
be strong and safe. 

Now all this I have said that we might the better 
see how poor, how hopeless a figure the Christian 
man of mere impulse must be. The Christian man 



134 Ruth 

who does just as he feels. He prays when he feels 
like it; studies his Bible when the fit takes him; has 
family prayers when the impulse is on. He goes 
to church — when the wind is right — half a day 
or whole at his whim, or as somebody has got 
him by his long and itching ears. He is in prayer- 
meeting when it is perfectly convenient or some 
one has urged him till he can't decently help it ; 
gives when some set effort has roused a momentary 
sympathy or for very shame he must. He under- 
takes Christian service when the passion sways 
him or when everybody else is aflame and there is 
no particular need of him ; does for Jesus and His 
Kingdom what and only what the moment's en- 
thusiasm prompts. This man, who, while you 
are talking with him, seems to glow and wake up 
and makes ready promise, "O, yes, yes; I'll 
come, of course," and you depend on him — expect 
him, wait for him, and he isn't there ! Or he is 
there once, wonders why everybody else isn't on 
hand, abuses them a little, seems to start for 
Godly service, and, ever after, if you want him 
you must go hunt him, bring him, lift at him, 
persuade him, tug to induce him and, when you've 
got him, find that you would have been better off 
without him ! O, these Christian men and women 
who do nothing on principle, — nothing because 
they have settled it that they ought to do it and 
so will do it, come what and cost what it may ; 
these waiters on tides, these weather-cocks swing- 
ing to the winds, these floaters on eddies, these 
straws for currents. The L,ord have pity and 



Ruth 135 

deliver us ! These brave starters who never do 
anything but start, — these enterprisers of holy- 
beginnings who never do anything but begin, — 
these putters of hand to plow who never turn a 
straight rod of furrow, — these builders of towers 
which never get a foot above ground, nor beneath 
the surface for foundation, — these goers to wars 
with no counting of the cost and so, when they 
see the enemy turn their backs on him and run, 
putting the Devil behind them in that way and 
no other! They put on the harness rejoicing, 
as when they put it off, because they put it off 
the moment they got it on. What Christians 
they are ! 

Where has God told you to go where you liked 
and do as you pleased? Where has he com- 
manded you to serve only when you were in the 
passion for it — to run only when you burned for a 
race and could not stand still? Where has He 
pledged you the absurd luxury of a perpetual 
passion for doing what you ought or excused you 
from things you do not fancy, things you dread, 
that will embarrass and try you out of measure ? 
Where is it that He said, " You need not deny 
yourself nor take up any cross to follow me ? ' , 
Who ever told you that the Christian career was 
one long holiday and Christian living a grand 
play-spell ? Who ever enlisted you as a soldier 
of the cross under the pledge that you should 
only fight when it is sport and march when there 
is no weariness in it and no burden to carry ; that 
you should have no service save that for which 
you are panting? 



136 Ruth 

Alack, men and women, my fellows in Christ, 
ye are not creatures of whim and conceit and 
momentary flame. Ye are not called to kiss the 
Christ, — Judas did that, — but to cleave to Him. 
Ye are given to Him, — body, soul, estate, time, 
opportunity and power, for dark and light, for 
service and hardness, for life and death, for the 
now and the forever ! In solemn and veritable 
contract, sealed with blood, ye are Christ's own. 
On the actual fulfillment of that compact, that 
sacred covenant of your love and liberty, hinge 
the solemn issues of life and death for eternity. 
It is a sober business. In weariness of the flesh 
and spirit as in alerter frames, ye are still to 
serve. In heaviness as well as under the thrill 
of enthusiasm, when all grow faint and cold 
around you, as when all are aglow, one day 
as another, ye are Christ's and bound to work 
His work. You will often have, with the imper- 
ative of a tremendous and grounded will, to com- 
pel yourself to unwelcome activity. When all 
the impulses leap with duty, thank God ! Those 
are your red-letter days. That shall be your 
common experience only when ye are perfected in 
heaven. You must be rid of a deal of world, 
flesh, and devil before that. When your passions 
will not move to meet His requirement, you are 
none the less His servant and must none the less 
obey. Your Christian love is not a passion so 
much as it is a principle and a holy law for all 
the life. 

You who have come young and aflame into 



Ruth 137 

the Christian life, whom with joyful hearts His 
church has or soon will receive to the table of the 
I^ord ; your emotions will not alway s glow, your 
hearts will not always burn towards the Christ. 
Your eyes will not always see Him in ecstatic 
vision. Your tastes will not always lead you 
gracefully on to Christian duty. You will not 
always be eager to take and bear the cross. You 
will often shrink from the thing you ought to do. 
High efforts of courage will be needful for taking 
up at first almost any Christian duty. A very 
real self-control and self denial will be involved 
in every day of true loyalty to Christ. Enthusi- 
asm will not do instead of loyalty. Nothing in 
nature or grace but an inflexible purpose, a holy 
and masterful will, reinforced by the Divine Spirit, 
crystallizing into holy habits and abiding princi- 
ple ; law supreme, overriding impulse, difficulty, 
distaste and revolt, bringing in steadfastness, can 
carry you through the long, good fight, lift you 
to Divine achievement or set you into Christian 
manliness or womanhood — a stalwart and to-be- 
trusted soul. You are not to cuddle and please 
yourselves, nor move by your impulses. You are 
to please Him and follow His will. You are not 
in the Christian life to get joy, heaven, holiness, 
anything for yourselves, but to distribute joy, to 
throng and widen heaven, and to diffuse holiness 
through all souls of men. The Gospel is not a 
promise to cradle you in a sweet peace, nurse you 
in a delicious bliss and upbear you in golden 
chariots to beatitude. It is God's imperial plan 



138 Ruth 

that by great and heavy fight ye shall enter into 
peace ; that by deep self-sacrifice ye shall find 
your joy ; that by grand ministries for man's up- 
lifting in redemption ye shall achieve your own. 
No Sybarites here, but only manly men and 
womanly women, taking up the great enterprise of 
Jesus, working with patient heroism his work, 
making up in their own bodies what remains of 
his suffering, shall come to worthiness to share 
His victory and His throne ! Rowland Hill 
once cried, "Alas, instead of being temples of 
God's praise, how many of us are but graves 
of God's benefits!" 

Beloved, there is in the Gospel no crown save 
for him who hath fought for it a good fight. 
There is no * ' rest remaining ' ' save for him who 
hath worn himself in labor. There is no reward 
save for him who hath nobly done. There is no 
throne to share with Christ save for him who 
hath served and suffered with his Lord. There 
is no kingdom yonder for any man who hath not 
builded in it upon the earth. Only to them who 
by ' ' patient continuance in well-doing seek for 
glory and immortality ' ' will he render eternal life. 

To cleave steadfastly is better than to kiss 
impulsively. See to it that ye who have kissed 
the Christ do never forsake Him. To kiss with 
the impulse of a great love and then to cleave to 
Him with a steadfastness that out-lasts the 
worlds, — be this your sweet and holy Chris tliness 
and mine. 



Ruth 139 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CHRISTIAN USE OF PERSONAL AFFECTION. 

And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return 
from following after thee : for whither thou goest, I will go ; 
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall be my 
People, and thy God my God : where thou diest, will I die, and 
there will I be buried : the Lord do so to me, and more also, if 
aught but death part thee and me. — Ruth. 

As WE move along this story of Ruth there con- 
tinually offer seductive opportunities for excursions 
into various themes, some taking but a paragraph, 
some a quarter-section of sermon, and some call- 
ing for the larger lingering of a full discourse. 
Such by-way was found in a previous chapter in 
the kiss of Orpah and steadfastness of Ruth. 
Such again will, I think, be found in the hearty 
salutation of Boaz to his workmen, and their cor- 
dial response. Such another we find now in these 
exquisite words of Ruth. It is as when one, 
walking along the wonderful Grande Promenade 
of the Bois de Boulogne, beside its fair lake, is 
tempted into many a winding, fairy-like path into 
the glorious wood to the right or left, to grotto and 
dell, and summer-house, only to return after a 
little to the grand course. 

The figure here is, you see, not of the Godly 
and pious Ruth, but of the human, loving Ruth. 



140 Ruth 

In this wonderfully beautiful outburst of her soul 
she is not cleaving to Israel's God, but to her 
mother-in-law. Orpah, just now, was not, pri- 
marity, rejecting Israel's God and choosing idol- 
atry, but was not thoroughly enough a devoted 
daughter. Ruth's sweet answer expresses no 
reverent allegiance to Jehovah nor especial affinity 
for His people, which make her cleave to Naomi, 
but a very tender personal affection for Naomi 
which decides her adherence to God and Israel. 
So this passage and this inspired story stand down 
to us a shining example of the high, sacred and 
saving energy of personal affection ; intimates to 
us its even grandest use, and preaches to us 
mightily of its responsibility. So this shall be 
our excursion for this hour. 

After the bare fact of the individual constitu- 
tion, — the personal existence, the very next thing 
of importance in mankind is the society of men. 
No man stands alone. None keeps his own charac- 
ter unmodified by his contacts with others. Every 
man, in more or less marked fashion, takes shape 
of character from every one with whom he makes 
contact. Set in this close society of mankind 
we are like drops of water associated in the ocean. 
Each drop of water is ideally a globe, that is its 
personality, its type. Yet never a drop in all the 
seas is round. It adjusts itself to its fellows in 
no man can conjecture what of eccentric form. 
Like this is the individual man in the society of 
men — himself, yet reshaped and modified by every 
other man who immediately or remotely affects 



Ruth 141 

him. Every body, thing, person, or soul which, 
directly or indirectly, excites in him a sensation, 
starts a feeling, wakens a thought or stirs an ac- 
tion in any sort, alters him, modifies him, has 
modulated his experience, his history, his very 
inmost self. He has felt what he else would not 
have felt, thought what he would not else have 
thought, done what he would not else have done, 
and IS what he could not else have been. 

A silent man, ages ago, out of his cloister dropped 
a thought into the world's thinking. Every man 
from that day to this, who has thought it because 
he did, and every man to whom that thought has 
been seed for other thinking, or spring of any 
feeling or action, has been for it else and other, — 
may be, heaven wide else and other, — than what 
he otherwise had been. A man, ages a-gone, did 
a thing. The thing done went into the current 
of affairs, touched many doers and many sufferers. 
No more can the world be what it else would have 
been. A man, in the dim ages back, was some- 
thing. His being shaped many things and beings 
beside him. He, too, was the head of a long line 
of imperishable heritages. He is yet an active, liv- 
ing force among men. He is neither dead nor yet 
sleepeth he. Intimately, vitally, not by the mere 
loose sequence of moments, hours, years, centuries, 
are the natal and millennial ages of the world 
interlocked, interwoven, identified ! Everything 
that has been, is, and shall be forevermore. Only 
its body has died. Only its form has been changed, 
and its name, like that of the dead man, been for- 



142 N Ruth 

gotten. Neither thing nor man ever dies. Every- 
thing is immortal. Every man lives forever, not 
in soulhood outside the earth merely, but here 
among men, in the world, and in circuits of ever- 
widening power. They are now anonymous, for 
the most part, and untraceable, and we are un- 
conscious of them — yet here they are, neverthe- 
less, shaping and commanding the masses of the 
present and the destinies of the future. 

Why, this is even the essential thing in the so- 
cial being, set in generations. Man, created for 
society, is intended to be affected by every contact 
with man. Society stands in that. Man, a sen- 
tient being, is to be affected by every sensation. 
The essence of a sensation is an effect on the sen- 
tient being. Society is exactly this effect of one 
upon another. The social power is the power to 
give and receive these impressions, to occasion 
and experience emotions and thoughts ; to induce 
and be led to action. Society stands in these 
and like effects of one upon another. No such 
effect can leave the man where or what he was 
before. No man or thing ever crossed the field of 
your conscious vision, no matter how transiently, 
without this absolute modulating efficiency upon 
you. That is true, for you are a sentient being 
and every sensation, with whatever of thought, 
feeling, action may come of it, is an effect upon 
you. 

We are all familiar with the results of mere 
sensuous impressions. Climatic influences, va- 
rieties of scenery, differences of locality and em- 



Ruth 143 

ployment, of food and drink revolutionize char- 
acter, insensibly, not of individuals merely, but 
of nations and races. Habitual impressions, — 
that is a succession of them, — of what sort so 
ever, mold and fix correspondent characteristics. 
Every separate impression contributes its effect, 
or the aggregate would be nothing. Everything, 
then, which we observe, feel, think on has its effect 
upon us, even if we come into no society with it — 
though it be not a thing capable of society at all. 

Now for man to come into society with man, — 
that is another and more potential thing. Each 
sentient, intelligent, free ; each endowed with like 
instincts and powers, clothed with the same dig- 
nities and responsibilities, stirred by the same 
cares and sorrows, hopes and fears ; kindred in 
sensibility, feeling, passion, thought; both, — 
all, — faced out by the same paths to the same 
great and inspiring destinies and equipped for the 
expression of all that is in them; keen-set, too, to a 
great social hunger, — a regnant social impulse; 
given to play of that mysterious force which we 
call sympathy, which adapts the very temper of 
the soul to a subtle marriage with the thought, 
feeling, will of another, — here begins an inter- 
action of wonderful, incalculable and quite resist- 
less energy. Each flashes through the other 
thought, feeling, belief. Each stirs in the other 
sentiment, instinct, passion. Each bends to catch 
the impulse of the other, — to understanding, ap- 
preciation and sympathy with him. Be ye sure ! 
These two souls are in play of a mighty forma- 



144 Ruth 

tive, — aye, even creative, power one upon the 
other. Let them stand long so side by side and 
the very blind shall see it. Of course that means 
that the first and every after hour wrought its 
effect. We are made to be so wrought by every 
hour and act of society. That is a fundamental 
ordinance of the race. 

So it happens that, through constant associa- 
tion amongst the members of it, any profession 
gets a very definite air and spirit of its own. 
Every trade, class, community, section, nation, 
sets a peculiar impress on each individual of it — 
a very marked and distinct impress. Over and 
above all individualities is induced a certain com- 
mon class or national type of the general charac- 
ter of which they can not be rid. The race or 
class assimilates, digests the individual and issues 
him into its type. 

This fact, that contact of one soul with another, 
modifies both, is only demonstration of a law fun- 
damental to God's plan of the world in both Prov- 
idence and Grace. It is His purpose to make the 
social ordinance of the world the power in it. 
Whatever He will do for man He does through 
man upon his fellow. In the Redemption itself 
Deity took humanity to its embrace, entered the 
society of man, wrought under its methods — by 
its laws and forces wrought the great Salvation. 
So will He work it out to the splendid consum- 
mation. He committed the " finished' ' Gospel, 
not to angels and supernal powers, but to men, 
and they are to make all the modes and forces of 









Ruth 145 

society instinct with it till it has caught from 
heart to heart and run through all the earth and 
down all the ages. 

This Gospel is the thought of God in this 
world and this social constitution of man is the 
plan for its supreme and universal efficiency. 
The significance of this social ordinance is that, 
by it, man may receive from and impart to his 
fellows what shall most advantage him and them 
in the giving and the receiving. Into that society, 
by the Incarnation, He put the almighty leaven, 
that, by every social touch, instinct, mode and 
law, it should reach the entire race and redeem its 
every soul, "As thou, Father, hast sent me 
into the world, even so have I sent them into the 
world," is our Lord's own declaration. 

Thus far we have been thinking on the power of 
one upon another in even the most ordinary and 
casual contacts of men in their communities of life, 
business, pleasure and abode. This, however, is 
but the ground-work of social energy. On it are 
built superstructures glorious in beauty, sweetness 
and power. In and over it God hath put in play 
special holy and sublime forces. You are molded 
by every contact with man. He attracts or repels 
you, suggests somewhat, gives you some expe- 
rience or other. No\y let him stay by you, ha- 
bitually attend you. It matters nothing what he 
is or what you are. This constant contact will 
immensely affect both you and him. Gravitation 
is not more certain. 

Now suppose that you admire this companion, 



146 Ruth 

think him worthy to be honored, imitated, rev- 
ered. So, you are freely opening to his influence 
your innermost recesses of character. You make 
your very soul plastic to his will by your enthus- 
iasm and admiration. You give a tremendous 
increment of energy to his every effect upon you. 
You second him by express efforts of your own 
will. Your opinions, thoughts, imaginations, 
words, actions, are affected, — the absolute whole 
of you, — your very bodily habits, and the features 
of your face are modified by him. Every admir- 
ation has in it a volition, transforming you toward 
the admired. Every flush of enthusiasm is an 
assimilation of the whole self to the thing or be- 
ing that inspires it. Let a man and his admirer 
stand long side by side and not gods, men, nor 
devils can stop the course of nature, nor hinder 
the molding work on the plastic material. 

Now let the heart to play. Let these two 
stand together intimately, long, admiringly and 
lovingly. Let each heart open love- wise to the 
other, in all its tender and mellowing warmth, 
self-sacrificing and self-forgetting, delighting in 
conformity, — in the surrender of its own will, 
compelling itself into resemblance. There is con- 
ceivable nothing more potent than that — more 
omni-potent ! Nothing is impossible to this 
power of personal affection. It is creative. Nay, 
it is re-creative. It is the redeeming power of 
God Himself! 

Think, now, how God has set man into this 
world, not merely into the general society of men, 



Ruth 147 

but into special circles of sympathy, dependence, 
care and love — into society concentrated and in- 
tensified by every possible circumstance to its 
most supreme and regnant power. Not that 
only, but He has set him into these inner, magic 
circles with no developed character — a thing yet 
wholly to be made, plastic to every touch, power- 
less against any, only a candidate for, a possibility 
of, character. Such a being, born into the deep 
deathlessness of parental love, — into the utter 
absolutism of parental power ! Characterless yet, 
susceptible, dependent; whose earliest impressions, 
knowledge, faith, love, come of them into whose 
arms it is born ; whose whole nature takes its ma- 
terial from theirs and then grows up on their 
nutriment, by their handling, in the sweet light 
and tender warmth of faith and love towards the 
father and mother. O, it is a marvel of Divine 
devising, — that beginning and long tutelage of 
dawning character under the parental hand ! The 
consummation of all social powers is this of parent 
upon the soul of the child. Nowhere is its like. 
God proposes to make His Gospel efficacious 
through the societies of men. He has ordained 
parenthood and childhood supreme amongst all 
the means of saving grace. With all my heart 
and memory and brain I know it. 

Besides all this of natural grace, His special 
covenants from the beginning have been with 
believers for their children. To them the "ex- 
ceeding rich and precious promises ' ' are made, 
explicit, blessed, omnipotent, on which the true 



148 Ruth 

believer may rest in perfect trust. Along these 
lines of pious descent have coursed all the graces 
of God through all generations of His people. In- 
stead of the fathers rise up the children in the 
whole household of Faith. It ought to be so. 
Here is the strongest of human influences, under 
the most favorable of possible circumstances, on 
the most absolutely plastic material. If any 
where human power, crowned by Divine promise, 
is to be effective for shaping souls into holy 
character, this must be so. And this is ! Here 
are seen the most thrilling effects wrought by 
human touch on character and destiny. Your 
parenthood is sacred trust for this. Woe worth 
the home where that trust is violated ! In no 
other relation does so deep and perfect an affec- 
tion move so long and loving labor. The inex- 
pressible fervor with which the whole soul of the 
father and the mother yearns for the child ! That 
love stops at nothing, is turned aside by no diffi- 
culty, weariness or suffering, will waste life itself 
in patient doing and infinite endurance, will not 
break even under stress of the child's shame 
or sin. Let now all this of love, sacrifice, and 
labor come of a heart full of gospel faith and spirit 
intent on the highest salvation. The watch- 
ing, the prayer, if must be, the agony ! The 
continuous contact ! The susceptible soul, easy 
to be wrought ! The promise and Spirit of God ! 
The strong Covenant ! The sacred Seal ! The 
Blessing, the Blessing granted ! The ten thous- 
and times ten thousand children of Christian 



Ruth 149 

parenthood righted by God's Spirit before they 
knew the right from the wrong or had wrought a 
sin ! The holy throngs more born of God in 
early childhood ! The uncounted multitudes held 
back by the power and prayer of the father or 
mother from unbelief, from profligacy and ruin ! 
Throngs of the vicious and reckless, out on the 
very verges of doom, have been drawn back by 
the strong cords of parental love to penitence and 
faith, to the father's or the mother's God. Be- 
lieve it. A father's faith goes forth with his son 
into all the perils of the world, covering him like 
armor. A mother's prayers hover over her boy 
like white wings of the angels, to keep him ' ' pure 
and unspotted from the world," or to recover him 
and lift him and lead him back from all its pollu- 
tions. Here are the probabilities of your child- 
ren's redemption. Ye shall be its glad agents. 
Glory be to God ! If you, father, mother, are 
not heart and soul about this work, saving for 
righteousness and God and heaven the souls to 
you so dear, the strongest probability, the surest 
promise of it, you, with your own hand are put- 
ting aside. If you yourself are walking away 
from that salvation, taking them with you away 
from the cross of Christ, — alas, alas ! how can 
you answer that ? All human agencies are con- 
summate in you. What can others do if you fail ? 
Bind yourself to this blessed endeavor by every 
sacred pledge, by every holy ordinance. Take 
the dear promise of God for yourself and your 
children. God grant it, that thou may est at the 



150 Ruth 

last present thyself before the throne, saying, 
" Here am I, Lord, and all the children thou hast 
given me ! ' ' 

And, rising high above all common social pow- 
ers, is the mystery of kindred in the sweet glory 
of brother and sisterhood. Souls standing so to- 
gether, like by kindred blood, presenting them- 
selves by likeness in form and feature, wrought 
toward each other by a common culture and train- 
ing, the sight of the same scenes, the sound of 
the same voices, the love of the same hearts ; 
grown into each other by the long companionships 
and intimacies of childhood and from childhood ; 
like by inheritance and held to each other in all 
the fulness of deep and steady affection, — these 
ties of brother and sisterhood, ah ! they are very 
close, tender and mighty. That thou art a brother 
or a sister gives thee a kind of natural royalty 
over the very character and will of the other, 
puts great part of thyself into the other that thou 
mayest work almost any miracle there, so thou 
be thyself noble, generous, wise and Christian. 
Putting the brother or sister-power with the 
father and mother omnipotence, ye establish a 
triumvirate girded by the loving grace of God — 
a triumvirate of resistless cogency. Ye can make 
the brother or the sister much what ye will, 
much what you are. God hath equipped you 
and your brother so in this wondrous thing, this 
mystery of kindred, that ye might by it draw all 
of your blood up to nobleness, to beauty, to 
heaven and Himself. It has been so, drawing 



Ruth 151 

souls back from leaning far out over the verge of 
hell, plucking them as brands from the burning. 
And these forces of society grow up and blossom 
into friendliness, a thing of wider reach than 
these of which I have spoken, if not quite so 
mighty. Friendship ! More beautiful, in a sense, 
than even the natural love of kindred. For our 
friendships are not entailed upon us as ordinances 
of nature, a thing into which we are born and 
must needs grow or be monstrous. These are 
matters of free choice, impulse, generosity, nobil- 
ity. Who can be a true friend hath a high grace 
in him. Who can not be that can scarce be saved 
from any dishonor here or hereafter. The true 
friendly is the true Divine. Is it not written, 
"He that loveth is born of God?" O, there is 
a wider, deeper, truer truth in that word of the 
apostle than we are apt to think or can now 
dwell on. The friend, deliberately and of free 
choice, gives himself to the influences of intimate 
companionship, the offices of affection, the sur- 
renders and sweet sacrifices of it — dedicates him- 
self to the leading, molding, regnant forces of it. 
Every man who is your friend has with a certain 
nobleness of self-abandonment and trust put him- 
self, a plastic soul, into your keeping as you have 
put yourself into his. A wondrous power of 
leading, guidance, redemption in every sort is in 
it. So God sets every man of you who is worthy 
of a friend into his circles of hearts, genial, ten- 
der, susceptible to your every influence ; put 
them there around you to be helped and saved 



152 Ruth 

by you from every meanness, lust, greed, — yes, 
from every damnation, present and eternal. If 
you can not do that, who can ? If you will not, 
who will ? Others may neglect them. You love 
them ! They may be cold and suspicious of 
others' efforts for their weal. You they love ! By 
all the truth of your love for them and their love 
for 5^ou, hath God ordained you their minister of 
all grace ! 

But friendship blossoms again into a more ra- 
diant and glorious thing, — a warm and blissful 
thing, which makes each of two hearts to the 
other monarch, each to other subject realm, rich, 
sweet and ample. Love, tenderer than that of 
friend for friend, sister for brother ; if that may be, 
than that of mother for her child ! Here at once 
is mastery and obedience, each in quality and 
measure most perfect. Here, in this constant 
companionship, absolute unity of interest, feeling 
and life, in this magic and miracle of glowing and 
passionate devotion, of steady, rational and still 
devotion, — this glad, free subordination of heart 
is enacted the supreme and final power of soul on 
soul. You, husband, wife, are set of God to a 
ministry of all grace, beauty and glory to this 
soul and life dearer than your own ; are given 
dominion, blessed and nigh whole, over character 
and weal for perfect redemptions. Human powers 
are consummated in you. Divine powers are at 
your bidding. You can save your wife, you 
can save your husband, from all unworthiness 
and sin, from a Godless life, a hopeless death and 



Ruth 153 

dread eternity. That supreme affection which 
alone sanctifies marriage makes all things pos- 
sible for you. Therefore hath God joined you 
together and made of you twain one flesh. L,et 
not the grave put you asunder ! 

God hath ordained it that, through the societies 
of men His salvations shall be effective. Above 
all societies, — their crown and perfection, — he has 
lifted up these relations of personal affection. 
They thrill with an amazing, transforming, and 
regnant energy upon soul, life, will, character of 
men. They are His choicest and most precious 
channels of grace. They, of His children who 
minister at the altars of human affection (as who 
of His true children does not ?) are His special, 
privileged elect, — priests, prophets, apostles, 
kings, throned in the very souls and lives He 
would redeem, like Naomi in the heart of Ruth. 
O, the honor, the bliss, the eternal joy ! Here 
Lord am I, and all whom thou hast privileged me 
to love ! 

This, then, is the doctrine and the supreme 
office of personal affection. Your loving Lord 
would have you by every gentle and winsome 
trait, by all courtesy and good-cheer, by kindli- 
ness and great-heartedness, stand, not out of, but 
within, all the societies of the world, — get very 
near the hearts of men, into their intimate friend- 
liness, confidence, sympathy and love, that, by all 
the sacraments of affection, you may win them to 
Him ; that by all the warmth, beauty, glory of 
Christly character and earthly fellowship you 



154 Ruth 

may have them in companionship eternal. Who- 
ever stands in this relationship of affection with a 
Christian soul is, in a very important sense, pre- 
pared for the incoming of the Christly grace. He 
admires and loves it in his friend. The contact 
is already made. L,et the wires thrill with the 
Christly power ! Christian friend, Christ giveth 
you a blessed ministry, a very sacred priesthood. 
See that none take your crown ! Fear not to 
stand lovingly in the world with a genial, glow- 
ing heart, full in the tides of sympathy with 
all its joys and labors and sorrows, lest you be 
attainted. So you stand there with a holy pur- 
pose, your Master shall keep you unspotted. You 
shall be stronger than the Christless. You and 
He are more than your friend alone. God gives 
you a purpose deeper, a passion grander, an aim 
more absorbing than is his, and, besides, a Holy 
Spirit and a personal Christ. Naomi shall not 
return with the listless and indifferent Orpah, but 
the loving Ruth shall go with the set and pur- 
posed and Godly Naomi ! 

This, then, is the lesson. Wherever j^ou, a true, 
Christian soul, can win a firm, true friend you can 
win a follower to Jesus. Believe it. Try it. Delay 
not. Cease not in thine house, in the circle of 
those who love thee and whom thou lovest. The 
beloved are waiting to be redeemed, only it must 
be by thee. Up and to your holy ministry about 
the altars of affection ! Many a true-hearted Ruth, 
for her love of thee, shall say as of old, " Entreat 
me not to leave thee, or to return from following 



Ruth 155 

after thee : for whither thou goest, I will go ; and 
where thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall 
be my people, and thy God my God : where thou 
diest, will I die, and there will I be buried : the 
Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but 
death part thee and me ! ' ' 

And death shall not part you. 



156 Ruth 



CHAPTER X 



LABOR AND CAPITA^. 

And y behold \ Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said unto the 
reapers. The Lord be with you! And they answered. The Lord 
bless thee! — Ruth. 

That picture in the harvest field of Bethle- 
hem, — Boaz, his reapers and the gleaner in the 
sunlight of the olden time, — its colors all mel- 
lowed by the ages ! It is exceeding fair. 

But that harvest greeting ! The rich owner 
coming to his fields and working men. Hear him. 
How his voice rings out on the morning air and 
resounds down the ages, with the hearty notes of a 
great and genial manhood and a frank and manly 
piety as well. ' ' My men, The L,ord be with you! ' ' 
And the men turn, sickle in hand, to answer in 
chorus of resonant good- will, * ' The Lord bless 
thee! ' ' The gleaner knows now that her * ' hap ' ' 
has been to light on a safe field and her fears are 
put to rest. She has heard hearty recognition 
of Jehovah from high and low, rich and poor. 
That is safety for her and prospect of generous 
gleaning. 

No wonder that there was peace and blessing in 
Israel then, such as to call back her wanderers 



Ruth 157 

from all the lands to which in the days of calamity 
they had fled. ' ' Happy is that people whose God 
is Jehovah ! ' ' Dread is the case of any people when 
either its rich or its poor, or both ; its leaders of 
enterprise or thought or society or its masses, fail 
to recognize Him as master and sovereign, — the 
actual significant force in affairs, — to be contin- 
ually regarded and revered. I can not empty 
those greetings, in this story, of reality or make of 
them a mere form. There is a fresh genuineness 
in them which means all that is said. Meaning 
what was said on both sides, there was a blessed 
national and industrial estate. 

When God is disregarded man will be held in 
light esteem. Why not ? When God's rights are 
coolly trampled under foot men's rights will have 
no basis of security. When highest obligations are 
lightly cast off, why should the lower and less mo- 
mentous be held sacred ? Throw away God, and 
any man who can, and finds it for his interest, will 
gaily toss you aside. When God's law and gov- 
ernment are trifled with, why should man's be 
revered ? His is, at least, as good as theirs, let 
us hope ! When the solemn sanctions of divine 
moral law are made a scoff, there is left no found- 
ation of morality and no sanction for virtue save 
a present expediency, which fails even to appear 
expedient ; no safeguard in business or society, 
or for any right, interest, dignity or liberty of 
man, save sheer force used brutally and selfishly. 
Integrity will rot. Society will be honey-combed 
with licentiousness and all corruption. Domes- 



158 Ruth 

ticities will grow loose. I,aws will be venal. Leg- 
islatures will be bought and sold like cattle in the 
shambles. Courts will lose their probity, crimes 
will run riot, administrations will be foul and gross. 
If any sin, shame or crime be pleasant or profit- 
able and hidden from the penalty of human law, 
it will be wrought, unless there be conscience 
grounded in a divine law, or the vision of a here- 
after for play of the penalties of the just judgment 
of a God who knows and will exact. Without 
God, why not every work of the Devil ? If this 
world be miserable and there be no other or 
worse, why, then, let the wretched make quick 
end. Why not? Suicide, — a daily horror, — is 
philosophy. Good and evil, right and wrong, 
virtue and lust, shame and honor are all, alike, 
distinctions without a difference if there be no 
God with His righteous definitions at the bottom 
of all. Without that law and its eternal sanctions 
of reward and penalty, the moral character of any 
people will fall into corruption and decay, its in- 
stitutions will crumble and its ruin will come, 
sure and terrible and not remote. Our own form 
of government is the very worst in all the world 
for a corrupt or corrupting people. When virtue, 
integrity, morality and religion have lost com- 
mand of the masses there is no power in our pop- 
ular sovereignty to hold or defend our rights or 
buttress our liberties, and there is no reason why 
we should not cease out of the world, nor any 
power to hinder such riddance. The tyranny and 
outrage of a debased mob is more hideous by far 



Ruth 159 

than that of a Nero or Caligula. Government 
by the majority, if the majority be depraved, is 
a most horrible rule of the Devil. The voice of 
the people, — the voice of God? Aye! If it be 
inspired of Him. But the voice of a depraved 
people is the voice of the Devil or of a legion of 
him. If our own masses and leaders are depart- 
ing from God, we have no right to sleep soundly 
at night, nor shall we do it in safety long. We 
must get our countrymen to God and the Gospel 
and its righteousness or we perish, and that more 
swiftly than they of the old and stouter des- 
potisms, which have yet some grace of a saving 
tyranny. 

The way to reach the masses is no new patent 
process. To reach Boston you must go there. 
Boston won't come to you. To reach the masses 
with God we must go to them with Him in our 
hearts and on our lips. The minister can't do it 
unless there be twenty of him to a church. That 
is just what you are for, what you have to do. 
We have hundreds of these ministers in every 
church, if they were only about their business. 
The entire membership of it is ordained to this 
work of the ministry and must carry the Christ 
everywhere with them — to the field and shop and 
mill and office, everywhere, just as Boaz carried 
his Jehovah to the barley field and his men. His 
greeting was a prayer and their response was a 
hearty Amen, turning his prayer back into his 
own bosom by their many-voiced reply. Yet 
these men were mere harvest hands, gathered 



160 Ruth 

from every-whither. It is a beautiful showing of 
the piety which had brought peace and prosper- 
ous days to Israel, as well as the good manners 
which adorned them. 

Note another feature — the mutual familiarity, 
good will, hearty respect between employer and 
employed. The most difficult thing in the world 
to beat into the head of any creature is the fact, 
patent as any fact ever can be, that the interests 
of employer and employed are one, that capital 
and labor are not essentially and forever at logger- 
heads. The employer will not see that it is ruin- 
ous to him to screw down wages below the point 
of comfortable and honest living, to chisel and 
oppress those who do his work till character, 
manhood, and self-respect are impossible to them 
and so their value impaired for any service. On 
the other hand the employed will not see that it 
is fatal to him to give less of honest work than 
the money's worth he gets, to demand the same 
wages for a bungle as for skill, to make capital 
unsafe or its ventures insecure. Harmonious co- 
operation, mutual respect, personal good- will 
between employer and employed, capital and 
labor, are the natural and normal condition of 
affairs, yet how rare in our times ! 

Yes, this is a theme of vital and most practical 
religion ! We have fallen on critical times, 
crowded with vital issues. Capital, which is 
merely labor of the past, coined, laid up, made 
current and lasting, and capable of being utilized 
over and over for the forever and ever of this world 



Ruth 161 

and for all its needs, — this capital is pitted against 
labor of brain and muscle, which is the capital 
of the worker of to-day. The natural relations of 
these two forms of capital are those of mutual 
help and absolute friendliness. Any other is so 
absurd as to be ludicrous, and so hurtful as to be 
criminal. Former labor, coined, preserved and 
current, is the great wage-fund for the employ- 
ment, utilization and maintenance of the new labor 
of to-day ; furnishes it with its facilities, materials, 
implements ; is the supply of its daily necessities 
and the source, in turn, of all its savings — its only 
hope of weal. The labor of to-day, warring on 
capital — the labor of yesterday — is warring more 
fatally against itself, cutting off the sources of its 
own supply, putting the knife to its ow 7 n throat. 
All the facilities of modern life and labor depend 
on these accumulations of capital. Everything 
which we eat, drink, or wear ; every nail, timber, 
shingle, coat of paint, pane of glass in the homes 
that shelter us ; all the utensils and furnishings 
of daily life ; all the means of locomotion we use 
on land or water ; every page we read, every print 
which hangs on the poor or rich man's walls ; 
every school the poor man's children enter ; every 
religious privilege which brings us into fellowship 
w T ith God and brotherhood of Jesus — all these 
things — everything that lifts us in civilization one 
step above the baldest savage state, is dependent 
on these accumulations of thrifty labor, which we 
call capital. 

They depend, moreover, on combinations of the 



1 62 Ruth 

capital of many men. The cloth in the poor man's 
coat is made in a great mill which is quite past 
the possibility of any one man. Many put their 
means together and reach out to the iron regions 
and the steel makers and the machinists and the 
coal fields and the wood-workers for their build- 
ings and machineries ; out to Australia and South 
America and our own far West for their wool, to 
the South for their cotton, to many lands for their 
silk, to the islands of the Indian Ocean and to 
Central America for their dyes, and ransack all 
the ages for inventions and processes. Then they 
employ the steamships and railways and canals 
and teams for transportation of their materials and 
products. So the cloth-mill uses all these com- 
binations of enterprise and all the industries which 
contribute to them in the production of the cloth for 
your coat. Then, for protection of these manifold 
processes, and of the workmen engaged upon 
them, and of the commerce which transports them 
all the powers of law and government are exerted, 
treaties are made, and international laws are cre- 
ated and enforced. Your coat means the genius 
of the ages accumulated, hoarded up, concentrated 
upon it ; means the labor of the ages saved and 
piled up as capital ; demands social order and 
sacred security for every man's life, free labor, 
and property. Who lifts his hand in the name of 
labor against the rights, the security, the free con- 
trol of capital — even of combined capital — is doing 
not sacrilege alone but suicide ; is bringing ruin 
to the extent of his power, to himself, to civiliza- 



Ruth 163 

tion and to all those immediately dependent on 
him. 

On the other hand, capital is wholly dependent 
on the labor of to-day. Its mills, stores, ships, 
railways, all its private and corporate plants are 
huge consumers, whether running or idle. They 
go to wreck faster unused than when going at full 
speed. The most colossal fortunes fade away like 
snow-drifts in June, without the labor to run their 
enterprises. The most powerful combinations of 
corporate capital are utterly helpless and doomed 
without the laborer's steady and willing hand. 
Intelligent, honest, reliable workmen are capital's 
absolute necessity. Capitalists who seek to stint, 
starve, enslave, degrade and brutalize labor are 
doing damage to their own most vital interests. 
The natural and normal relation between capital 
and labor is found when capital seeks the inde- 
pendence, intelligence, happiness and virtue of all 
working men, and when labor guarantees to capital 
security, faithful and competent service and just 
gains ; when, in short, the capitalist — Boaz — 
comes to his reapers in the morning with a hearty 
' ' The L,ord be with you ! ' ' and his reapers answer 
with an equally cordial response, ' ' The Lord bless 
thee ! ' ' and on both sides each does his best to 
assure the success of the mutual prayer. It is 
fearfully obvious that this state of things does not 
exist in our day, in our own land or elsewhere. 
The whole world of capital and industry is per- 
turbed — in a state threatening chaos, or else in it 
already. Strikes, boycotts, lock-outs, enforced 



164 Ruth 

idleness, misery, nakedness, starvation and blood- 
shed illustrate the confusion worse confounded of 
this chaos in the industrial world. Since 1880 the 
loss of wages alone from strikes and lock-outs has 
been away up towards $100,000,000 a year, with 
immense concomitant of every form of misery and 
every shape of social disorder and moral evil.* 
Capital, of course, suffers heavily. General busi- 
ness is depressed and made feverish and uncertain. 
Damage is done to all enterprise and prosperity 
which can not be computed in dollars and cents. 
Hatreds between class and class are engendered. 
Outrageous theories and idiotic notions, chaotic 
and anarchistic, are evolved from this cauldron of 
unreasoning furies, in shapes and numbers to appal 
the most optimistic. The industries and trade of 
Great Britain are seriously impaired already as 
result of these crazy conflicts. Our own distresses 
of the past have been greatly intensified by these 
strifes. Conditions now existing and continuing 
will seriously impair capital, which will timidly 
withdraw itself from enterprise and go into inac- 
tion. Labor will suffer more largely from the in- 
direct and permanent derangement of industries 
than from the temporary and direct loss of em- 
ployment and wages. Labor, wretchedly misled, 
ordinarily hits on the very worst times in which 
to make its fights. 

To fix now, in detail, the blame for this unnat- 

*It is estimated that a strike just ended in Chicago cost labor a 
loss in wages of $250,000 and contractors $400,000 a day capital. For 
a series of weeks this last year of the nineteenth century is more 
prolific of these disturbances than any former year of our history. 



Ruth 165 

ural conflict would be past the possibilities of our 
chapter. That there are oppression, greed and 
heartless cruelty on the part of capital goes with- 
out saying. That corporate capital is apt to be 
without a demonstrable soul is doubtless true. 
That manufacturers and corporations and rich 
concerns are apt to look on their employees as mere 
machines or of less account than machines, since 
they can be replaced more cheaply, is too true. 
That labor has been driven to combine in these 
labor unions for self-protection is probably true. 
That wrong-doing and wrong failure to do is 
hugely responsible for the discontent of labor is 
past denial. That God and all good men are, in 
so far, on labor's side, is certain. Besides, the 
capitalist, with his opportunities and means of 
intelligence and culture, ought to be held to a 
more strict account than the day-laborer whom 
he employs, for a just and reasonable conduct of 
affairs. Moreover, it is doubtless true that he has 
had a more direct power in all legislation, till of 
late, so that the laws have been more than fair to 
him, the world over and here. Beyond all this, the 
world sees the capitalist and his family rich, happy, 
amidst abundance of all things, with culture, 
travel and luxury, while his working-man is in 
hard and narrow lot, his wife and children pinched 
and half-taught and coarsely fed and clad and 
roughly sheltered. So the world's sympathy goes 
out to the laborer in the great conflict, and much 
is pardoned to him which would not be condoned 
in his rich and opportunitied employer. Then the 



1 66 Ruth 

rich are few and the poor are the many. So the 
flooding of human sympathy is with the poor in their 
often wild and mistaken ways of struggle. I am 
but a poor man myself, and my sympathies are with 
the poor. But, while I see the tyranny and oppres- 
sion of capital and power, I can not fail, also, to 
see the terrible mistakes of organized labor. It 
forever chooses the most inopportune moments 
and methods for its battles. It gives up its per- 
sonal liberties to the worst of tyrannies. It has 
tied itself, hand and foot and brain and will, to 
absolute controlling authorities which are neither 
intelligent, responsible, incorruptible, nor even 
American. It is worse than folly for a capable 
American workman to bind himself to work for a 
wage which an incapable bungler in his union 
could fairly earn. It is worse than mere folly for 
him to demand that his incapable fellow unionist 
shall be paid what only a capable man can earn. 
That is robbery of the employer, a serious moral 
offence as well as a wrong to himself. It is 
tyrannous outrage for him to insist that any other 
laborer shall join the union and pay its dues and 
assessments as the condition of being permitted to 
work at his trade and support his family. It is 
outrage on labor and American manhood to de- 
mand that no man shall be employed by mill or 
corporation or Government establishment who is 
not a member of some labor organization. It is 
imbecile for working men to put themselves under 
bond or oath to quit work, without a grievance, 
at the bidding of some secret order. It is a tame 



Ruth 167 

and spiritless subserviency which leads 14,000 
men on a great railroad system to go out of shop, 
place and wage at the bidding of less than 3,000 
of their number in a secret organization whose 
irresponsible chiefs had bidden them to strike 
work for the reason that a single man on an un- 
affiliated road had lost his place. It is not folly, 
but crime, in pursuance of such a strike, to take 
possession of the property, wreck its engines, tear 
up its tracks, stop its trains and subject a conti- 
nent to embargo. It is high crime to drive out 
by threats, violence, injuries and murder, men 
who propose to take the striker's abandoned place, 
whether it be done by armed and belligerent 
strikers, their wives and sympathizers, or by the 
insensate Governor of a State ! 

A few years ago it was threatened that, in a 
strike then raging, all the railroads of the con- 
tinent should be tied up. The leaders would 
have done it if they had been able. Think of it ! 
Such a tie up would starve to death and destroy 
every large city in America in a month. The 
stock of provisions on hand in New York would 
be consumed in a week. Without railroads the 
people could not flee the city. Wandering out in 
starving crowds on foot, they would perish. The 
city would be left to looters and practically des- 
troyed. That these men had no power to carry 
into execution their infamous desire, does in 
nothing diminish the hideousness of the proposal. 

It is high crime against labor, as well as the 
community, to tie up a street railway because it 



1 68 Ruth 

employs, and will not discharge, an honest and 
faithful non-union man, throwing him out of work 
and wage and power to support his family. Of 
all tyrannies, the meanest is that which under- 
takes to direct men where they shall buy or sell, 
with whom they shall deal, what stamp shall 
entitle them to trade. The whole boycott system 
is a disgrace to which any American citizen would 
better starve than submit. Yet it was this to 
which the great State of California was bidden 
resort for the expulsion of the Chinese — this to 
which a great trades union resorted to punish a 
Bohemian woman for baking Bohemian bread ! 
This whole preposterous and tyrannous side of 
organized labor is a foreign importation run by 
alien ideas and alien men. Of one great union in 
New York city, with thousands of members, it is 
said that there are but fifty Americans. The vast 
and often fatal strikes in the coal regions are the 
work of elements almost entirely foreign. The 
ruling spirits in all the outrages and disorders and 
blood-shedding of which these strikes are the 
source are from abroad. These perturbers of 
labor have brought with them all stripes of soci- 
alism and anarchy, have so mixed their notions of 
the "rights of labor " with dynamite and murder 
as to make them explosive and abhorrent. 

In the theories and working plans of multitudes 
of these intruders, property is crime, unless it be 
in their own hands, social order their great enemy 
and arson and the bludgeon their methods. Ter- 
rorism is their argument, their element. The 



Ruth 169 

American working-man ought to keep clear of 
such leadership and such deadly notions. Our 
American labor ought to have a genius of its own, 
equal to the task of setting up its organizations 
along lines of common-sense and common right- 
eousness which would improve labor and all its 
conditions, help to make the laborer capable, in- 
telligent, and effective, and set each to kindly 
social relations with all ; ought to have genius 
enough to set them afoot under such organic laws 
that they can not be perverted to tyranny over 
their own members, over other free laborers or 
over the employers of labor. Membership in 
these truly American unions should be absolutely 
voluntary — no member forced in under penalty of 
being hindered of his right to earn his living. If 
the present labor unions will not so reconstruct 
themselves by a wisdom of their own, they will 
go down under the ban of an awakened and effec- 
tive public opinion. Public necessity, order and 
property, as well as labor itself, will not submit to 
be forever trifled with by lawless adventurers. 

But the evils of these class conflicts, — the poor 
against the rich, labor against capital, — are too 
tremendous to need display. The remedy is the 
question. Hostile unions of labor on the one side 
and of capital on the other will never cure. Courts 
and laws will never do it. 

What is the real difficulty ? Abnormal selfish- 
ness, greed, wrong on both sides ! Is there any 
remedy for that ? Wrong-doing is the root of all 
the evil and wrong-doing comes of the wrong 



170 Ruth 

heart. Friends, this world will never go right 
until some radical cure of diseased hearts be dis- 
covered — and applied ! Given the passion for 
righteousness in the heart of capital and the like 
passion meeting it in the heart of labor and all 
would be well. I believe, with profoundest con- 
cern, that this earth's history has been, is, and is 
to be, experiment on experiment, failure on failure, 
overturn on overturn, till He whose right it is 
shall come to His own. It will never run well till 
God be suffered to run it. These vast evils will 
not cease to ravage till man is redeemed from the 
heart outward. There can be no peace till Right- 
eousness reigns. The nostrums will be tried in 
vain, or with but transient appearance of success 
till man turns to God in holiness. This earth is 
coming to no satisfactory estate save by the re- 
generation of its very soul to Godliness. When 
every rich employer shall come to his men, as 
Boaz did, with a hearty prayer, ' ' God be with 
you ! " for morning's greeting, and every corps of 
laborers shall reply, ' ' Jehovah bless thee ! ' ' then 
every man shall have his right in every field of 
honest work, and capital will be safe, kindly, 
courteous ; frank friendliness will be the law, and 
rich and poor, high and low, employer and em- 
ployed will meet and rejoice together, as Boaz 
with his workmen in the happy fields of these 
shining days of Israel's piety, prosperity and 
peace. The prevalence of the Gospel and nothing 
else, reaching through regeneration of the heart 
of the employer and the employed, will ever right 



Ruih 171 

this business or any other sad business in this 
world. Our dreams of golden ages to come will 
be vain dreams till, by profound revival of pure 
and undefiled religion men be brought to right- 
eousness and the love of it, through Christ, His 
Cross and His Spirit. All remedies beside that 
are quackeries, futilities, delusions which will no 
more stave off wrecks of nations, races, and ages 
in the future than they have done in the past. 

You, men of property and great enterprise, must 
give yourselves to the work of extending and en- 
forcing the Gospel's redeeming grace if you would 
be safe. You, men of the forge and pick and ma- 
chine, must give yourselves to forwarding the 
Gospel's vital power if you would be free from 
oppression and wrong and misery. Lay aside your 
Godlessness, O ye men of the Twentieth Century, 
or there is nothing that can save you for this world 
or the next. If you will not do that nothing will, 
can, ought or is meant of God, to save your weal. 
Give God His rights and you can get your own ! 
Yield Him His sovereignties and you shall come 
to yours! Let His government be sacred and you 
will need little of human law. While sin reigns and 
ravages the earth, misery, disorder, cruelty and op- 
pression will not cease. Men of every class 
will groan on under heavy burden and curse. 
The only cure of human ill is cure of sin. The 
only cure for sin ever proclaimed to this world is 
the Cross of Christ. Let it be exalted every- 
where and the moanings of earth shall cease, the 
golden day of the universal happiness and un- 



172 Ruth 

mingled prosperity shall come. Till then your 
hope is vain, your nostrums futile and your world 
in sorrowful travail. Ye need hope for nothing 
else, save as the Gospel more and more prevails. 
Then " righteousness and peace shall kiss 
each other ! ' ' Then beauty and strength shall be 
wedded. Then high and low shall be one, 
for the lowliest shall be princes and heirs of 
eternal kingdoms, sons of God and brothers of the 
eternal King. Then rich and poor shall be at one, 
for the poorest shall abound in all plenty, lacking 
nothing. The Fatherhood of God and the Brother- 
hood of Man shall be the close tie of universal 
kindred. The whole shining earth shall bask in 
the sun-light of the L,ord. His glory shall fill the 
earth as the waters cover the sea. When He whose 
right it is shall reign in all hearts in earth as in 
Heaven, man's rights will be won without con- 
tention, every man's weal will be the joy and the 
aim of every brother man and of his Father God, 
and Earth's Golden Age will have come ! Lord 
hasten it in our time ! 



OCT 



2<2 19 Q0 



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